


Law Like Love

by PlaidAdder



Series: Wild About Harry [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alley Sex, Christmas, F/F, F/M, Fix-it fic, Handcuffs, His Last Vow Spoilers, M/M, anti-Mary, anti-Mofftiss, i hated the HLV Mary Morstan, i like acd canon mary morstan, i liked sign of three mary morstan, just so you know, moftissing moftiss, there's christmas in it, this fic will not fix Mary Morstan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-13 23:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 52,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1244686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after Sherlock didn't go off on that mission to eastern Europe after all, all is well at 221B Baker Street. Little Rachel is just beginning to sleep through the night. John and Sherlock are sleeping with each other. Charles Augustus Magnussen is alive and unwell and just about bankrupt. And Mary is nowhere in sight.</p><p>Obviously the events of "His Last Vow" were not what they seemed. What really happened? How did we get here from there?</p><p>Well, we're going to find out. Backwards.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. NIGHT CALL

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided that the only way back into this fandom, for me, is to Moftiss Moftiss. Behold, the true story of what was REALLY going on during "His Last Vow," instead of all that shit you THOUGHT was happening.

Waking in the middle of the night was nothing new to John Watson. But it felt different now. The nightmares had always fired him out of sleep like a bullet from a gun. He'd crash into consciousness as if it were a pane of glass and come to on the alert, with every muscle strained, his jaw clenched, his teeth sore from grinding, the adrenaline still pulsing, but slowly beginning to ebb away.

These days, sleep was not so much oblivion as a kind of misty country into and out of which he kept straying. He surfaced gradually. Usually he heard her first. That tiny, high-pitched cry, amplified by the baby monitor, and behind it the muffled sound of Rachel's actual voice, just a fraction of a pitch lower. John was keeping a little log, trying to decode the different sounds. He thought he had managed to differentiate the cry of discomfort from the cry of hunger. Sherlock was of course reading the log when John wasn't looking, and would occasionally toss little darts of sarcasm at unhelpful moments. "Even Lestrade," he had been heard to observe only yesterday evening, "could, from the tone and frequency of this particular vocalization, deduce the existence of gas bubbles in Rachel's stomach."

John had promised Mary that they wouldn't name their daughter after Sherlock. Well, they hadn't. Exactly.

But this time it wasn't Rachel's voice on the monitor. It was Sherlock's.

John sat up and squinted at the grainy image on the monitor's tiny screen. Sherlock was sitting in John's old armchair, which had been moved into what used to be John's bedroom, but was now possibly the least attractive nursery in London. They had made an effort. Most of the clutter had been swept into the closet, John's bed had been dismantled and stored in one of the vacant apartments, and a miniature fridge did double duty as an end table next to the chair opposite the little white crib, which had been found at a rummage sale and spirited into 221B during the dead of night. It had been a very efficient operation--even Mrs. Hudson never knew--but of course the conditions of secrecy, and the personalities of the individuals to whom the mission had been entrusted, meant that it was a little short on brightly colored objects and jingly soft toys. The only thing in the room that actually looked as if it might have been bought in advance by someone expecting a baby was a flight of vividly pink flamingoes making its way across the wall above the crib toward the window at the end. Sherlock's initial reaction to them was almost literally emetic. But he accepted them now with only the most perfunctory of scowls. He was secretly pleased, John thought, that Rachel's room could almost be described as a study in pink.

Sherlock's  bare legs, too long for the chair, were stretched out before him. Sherlock's only concession to the new arrival, in terms of his sleeping attire, was a ratty pair of black shorts and a gray London 2012 Olympics T-shirt which John was pretty sure had at one point belonged to a murder victim. Certainly it was too large for Sherlock, who was cradling Rachel, still swaddled in the pink blanket Lestrade had given her, in the crook of one wiry arm. Her little head, with its sprinkling of strawberry blond fuzz, was propped up at what Sherlock considered the optimal angle, and Sherlock's other hand held the bottle, expertly positioned so as to minimize the possibility of air bubbles. Sherlock's new project was a scientific study on the gastrointestinal vicissitudes of bottle-fed babies. He had designed his own app to record the data involving times and amounts of feeding and number and duration of burps. John had offered the app for free on the blog. So far there were over a hundred thousand downloads.

John's mobile lay on top of the fridge. Sherlock appeared to be listening to it. The voice on the phone came through the monitor only as a faint buzzing sound.

Sherlock's head tilted back, the dark curls spilling over the top of the armchair. Though the image wasn't good enough to show it, John himself could imagine Sherlock's eyes closing, the way the light from the Teletubbies lamp that Donovan had fished out of some rubbish tip would strike the exposed curve of Sherlock's throat. 

"Oh that is good," Sherlock's voice murmured. "Tell me more."

There was another buzzing from the phone. It produced in Sherlock a little writhe of arousal that was now achingly familiar to John.

"How big is it?" A low chuckle from Sherlock's throat. "Is it big enough to hurt?"

Another short bleat from the phone, and Sherlock took in a long slow breath. He let it out in a gasp, as his eyes flew open.

"Yes! YES!"

John was at the bedroom door and into the hallway before he realized how angry he was. He tried to pull himself up when he reached the entrance to what was now Rachel's room. She could not, after all, understand words; but his temper would do her no good.

"Sherlock," John barked, as the door banged open.

Sherlock looked up at him with that same infuriating innocence John had seen on his face in that crack house. "Oh, hello, John."

"I'm glad you're helping with the feedings," John bit off, as he stalked over to the mini fridge, "but maybe nobody's ever explained to you that you should not feed a baby while you're having   _phone sex_ \--"

John snatched up the mobile, then looked down at the caller ID on the screen.

"...with my sister."

John glared at Sherlock. Sherlock began trying not to laugh.

"John!" Harry's voice was perfectly audible now, blaring up through the phone. "Will you please talk to your boyfriend about the concept of normal business hours?" _  
_

"He called you?" John said, a little foggily, as his fatigued brain attempted to readjust his understanding of the situation. "It's three in the morning."

"I left that man five voicemails today about the Magnussen decision," Harry snapped. "Five. And when does he call back? Now. Just because  _he's_ up warming bottles and changing nappies doesn't mean we all are."

With a smile that warned of future mischief, Sherlock heaved himself out of the chair, Rachel still in one arm, and set the bottle down on the fridge. He walked to the dressing gown that he'd thrown over the edge of the crib and extracted his own mobile. While John struggled to soothe Harry's ire, Sherlock began looking something up.

"So the decision came down today?" John murmured, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.

"Yes," Harry said. "Four hundred thousand pounds, John. Plus court costs."

John's hand dropped. His eyes snapped open.

"Say it again," he said. And now, at last, he understood. "Say it again, slowly."

"Charles Augustus Magnussen," Harry said, slowly, "has been found guilty of libel under English defamation law and now he owes me four. Hundred. Thousand. Pounds."

"Oh my God," John said. He could feel laughter bubbling up from his stomach, making his head even lighter. "Oh my God."

"It  _is_ fantastic, isn't it?" Harry said. She was  _almost_ giddy. "I'm going to set up a trust for Rachel. I'll set up a trust for you and Sherlock. Maybe I'll set up trusts for Molly and Lestrade. TRUSTS FOR EVERYONE!"

Over Harry's laughter, he heard a bleating noise come through the phone that sounded exactly like someone else's mobile phone ringing.

John glanced over at Sherlock. He had his own mobile to his ear, and one index finger laid against his lips.

Faintly, John could hear the murmuring of another woman's voice on Harry's end. "Oh criminy. Is it morning already?"

He thought that in this other woman's voice he could detect perhaps just a hint of an Irish accent.

"What in the name of..." Harry muttered. 

"Hello?" said the other woman's voice, groggily.

Sherlock's voice floated over from across the room, breezy and conversational. "Oh, hello, Janine. I was just up, you know, doing baby things, and I thought that, since we're in a good place now, I'd call and chat--"

"SHERLOCK!" Harry shouted. "You MISERABLE FUCKER!"

Barely a second later, through Harry's phone, John heard the now unmistakeable tones of Janine on the warpath.

"Oh Sherl. This is really beyond the beyonds. Can't you deduce who I'm sleeping with without waking a girl up in the middle of the night? I have to work tomorrow."

"Sherlock," John hissed.

"Well, really, John. I think it in very poor taste for your sister to be moving in on my fiancee, so soon after the end of our engagement."

"Not funny, Sherlock," Janine's voice said. "Good night. Sleep tight. Don't worry at all about my sneaking up on you while you sleep and shaving you bald as an egg, because I'm totally  _not_ going to come in there and do that one night if you don't stop messing. Good night."

"So," John said, since Harry still seemed to be seething on the other end. "You and Janine."

"Yes," Harry sighed.

"Now that the case is over."

"Yes," Harry muttered.

"And...for real."

"YES!" Harry snapped. "Yes, for real, at least for right now."

"Well then," John said, blinking. "There it is."

There was an awkward silence.

"Tell Sherlock," Harry finally said, "that he should be checking the financial pages. The stock price of CM Ltd. has been in free fall ever since the judgment was announced this morning. Six months ago, four hundred thousand pounds would have been nothing to Magnussen. Give it another six months and Magnussen may have to declare bankruptcy just to pay my damages. Also Sherlock may be interested to know that several other plaintiffs have announced plans to initiate libel actions against Magnussen or against CM Ltd."

John gazed down at the phone, suddenly awash in filial affection.

"Thanks, Harry," he said. "Get some sleep."

"I'll do my best. How's Rachel?"

"Oh, she's fine. She's great. Eats like a horse and just last week she slept through the night once."

"Does she like the flamingoes?"

"They're great, yeah. Thanks so much for putting them up for her."

"Well, that wallpaper will give her nightmares if something's not done about it. Good night, John."

John hung up. He looked over at the crib. Sherlock was just laying Rachel back into it. Her eyelids were drooping, and her little round face had that expression of serenity that could be produced only by a warm bottle and a full stomach. John watched Sherlock withdraw his hands, gently, careful not to wake her, and straighten up slowly. Half the time, Sherlock looked at Rachel as if she were only a particularly intriguing experiment. But there were these moments, when John knew there was more to it.

Sherlock turned to him. John caught the glint in his eye, and began to feel as if he might just die of joy.

"We hit him where he lives," John murmured.

"We hit him where he lives, John," Sherlock repeated, in that thrilling and intense whisper he now used so often around the flat. "His blood's in the water and the sharks are on the move. Every day, a little more of the flesh will be torn from the bones of Charles Augusts Magnussen and his rapidly collapsing media empire. He will be bled by inches over months and years. I love this verdict. It is the gift that will  _never_ stop giving."

Sherlock strode past John to the doorway. John followed him into the bedroom. Neither of them had had a good night's sleep in months. But at the moment, neither of them were tired. 

END CHAPTER ONE

 


	2. ON THE ROCKS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place two days earlier than the first chapter.

**TWO DAYS EARLIER**

What a cheap little room, Magnussen thought, glancing over Athanson's bowed head at the cinderblock wall behind him. It was a little box of vulgarity tucked away in the bowels of this magnificent courthouse, where the barristers, judges, stenographers, aides, defendants, plaintiffs, and security staff all came to gratify those physical needs that so embarrassed the citizens of this great metropolis. Of course they would not spend a single pound on design in a place like this, nor dedicate even a single man-hour to selecting a less nauseous color of paint with which to glaze the walls. The vending machine that glowed malevolently in the center of the wall was a more aesthetic object than either the white molded-plastic table at which he sat, or the graying and paunchy lawyer who had finally raised his head and was talking to him in that same urgent yet despairing tone he had been using all week.

"Mr. Magnussen," Athanson was saying. "Mr. Magnussen. Please."

Magnussen slowly returned his bored gaze to his lawyer's unappetizing face. He owned Athanson, of course--a hit and run five years previous, driving while intoxicated, a child had died--but as a possession Athanson could offer very little in the way of pleasure. He was useful only. Sometimes useful.

"I do apologize," Magnussen murmured. "You were saying?"

"We should be in settlement talks right now," Athanson said, keeping his voice low and glancing furtively at the other figures milling about the break room. 

Magnussen leaned across the table. He reached out with his left hand--sweating worse than ever, he could feel sweat tricking down the inside of his wrist--and gently patted Athanson's cheek. The look of humiliated revulsion in Athanson's little piggish eyes took just a bit of the edge off the gnawing pain that seemed to have made a home in the pit of Magnussen's gut.

"If we lose," Magnussen said, "I will see to it that you never practice law again."

"Listen to me," Athanson snapped, almost as if he had somehow grown a spine in the last five minutes. "You can put all the pressure you want on me. It won't make a damn bit of difference to the outcome. The burden is on us and we are not making it."

"We are not making it," Magnussen purred, sliding his hand down inside Athanson's collar, "because  _you_ refuse to enter the surveillance into evidence."

Athanson actually slapped Magnussen's hand away.

The sting was so startling that Magnussen was, for a moment, at a loss. Athanson pressed his advantage.

"For the thousand and tenth time," Athanson whispered. "We cannot introduce the surveillance evidence. You obtained that evidence illegally. If we try to introduce it, it will not be allowed,  _and_ you will open the door to a future criminal prosecution. And even if the judge would allow it, by producing the surveillance evidence you would be acknowledging that you collected it, which would indicate that you published that story with malicious intent, which would invalidate the basis in fact defense, which is the only defense we can still make. So do not talk to me any more about your damned surveillance evidence, Magnussen. It has no value whatsoever except as part of your home movie collection."

Magnussen tried to think of a satisfying response, but his attention was drawn to the vending machine. The glow emanating from its glass panel was blocked by the silhouette of a woman. A stocky woman, true; a woman with broad shoulders and broad hips which were emphasized by the charcoal-gray suit she wore to show everyone in that courtroom how she meant business. If she really meant business, she should do something about that haircut.

Harry Watson. John Watson's other pressure point. And now, the plaintiff.

She pressed the button, then straightened up. Her selection dropped into the slot with a thunk. She turned around, holding a plastic bottle in one hand. Of course she saw him.

He watched her approach, his mind scrambling. There must be some way of applying the pressure, even at this late date. He watched the bottle dangling in her hand. There was a paper label on it, showing a brightly colored picture of an apple. He saw for the first time that in her other hand she held a glass tumbler, half-filled with ice. She'd got it off the back table, of course, where they had the complimentary water pitchers. Still. It gave him an idea.

Alcohol. The last remaining pressure point. She was still drinking, after all; that was clear from the surveillance. And rather a lot. There were still at least two days of evidence to get through. Get someone to cozy up to her in a bar tonight--Janine would have done it, but of course that was out of the question; pity about that--and take her home, and get her into a position so compromising--

"Good afternon, Magnussen," Harry said.

She had stopped at the edge of the table, right next to Athanson's chair. Magnussen looked up, without eagerness. There were few things he hated more, at this point in his life, than the sight of Harry Watson's face.

"Mind if I join you?"

Harry pulled out the unoccupied folding chair without waiting for a response. Athanson opened his mouth, but Magnussen waved him to silence. Let her play her little game. So many of them tried; and they lost. They always lost.

"Delighted," Magnussen said, as she set the tumbler down on the table.

"I've never told you how much I enjoyed your testimony," Harry said, as she began trying to get the cap off the plastic bottle of juice. "There's just something about the sound of your voice. It's so soothing, and yet so sinister. Reminds me of these old black and white films my father used to watch. Big Ingmar Bergman fan. Are you a devotee of classic cinema, Mr. Magnussen?"

He let out a gentle sigh of boredom, performing a minute adjustment to his spectacles with one hand. "I have no use for dead media."

"Pity," Harry said. She had the cap off the bottle now, and raised it to the light. "I love films. The artifice of it, the way they lie to you. Context, you know, it's so important, and in film, there are so many ways to manipulate it."

Athanson sat up with a barely-suppressed growl of anger. Magnussen shot him a look. He subsided.

"You see this," she said, waggling the bottle and making the amber liquid inside dance. "You just saw me get this out of the vending machine. You can see the label on the bottle. So as long as it's in the bottle, you know this is apple juice. Kid stuff. Makes you think of sticky toddlers out at the park, dropping their sippy cups in the dirt. Whereas, if I pour it into this..."

The amber liquid trickled into the tumbler, lapping the sides of the glass, covering the ice cubes.

Magnussen felt a chill.

"Now if it's real life," Harry said, "you can taste it. You can smell it."

Harry waved the tumbler under his nose. Magnussen looked away.

"You still know it's apple juice. But if it's on film...if all you have is an image, or even an image with sound..."

Harry lifted the glass tumbler, holding it up to catch the dull light that filtered down on them from the overhead fixtures. She took a sip, watching him. And though he knew his face did not move, not a single muscle, he also knew she could probably see the expanding pool of moisture around each of his hands.

"It looks just like scotch and water, doesn't it?" Harry said, with a tight little smile. "And it could be. For all you know."

Harry slammed the tumbler down on the table. The liquid sloshed over the rim. A little puddle of amber fluid, slowly expanding along the tabletop to mingle with the slick of his own sweat. 

"Enjoy the afternoon," Harry said, lifting up the plastic bottle and walking toward the exit. "I know I will."

Athanson watched her disappear through the break room door.

"So," Athanson said, bitterly. "Would you still like me to put in the surveillance video?"

Magnussen lunged across the table. 

"If you say another word to me about this..."

Unable to think of a  better way to end the sentence, Magnussen darted his head forward and took the end of Athanson's nose in his teeth. Just a little nip. 

Magnussen subsided into his chair. He felt a little better. Athanson stared down at the table, rubbing the end of his nose with one hand. The poor man was crying. 

"For God's sake," Magnussen muttered. "Don't cry, Eddie. There is nothing secreted by the human body that I find more revolting than tears."

END CHAPTER TWO


	3. POSSIBLY MERETRICIOUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place two days earlier than the previous chapter.

**TWO DAYS EARLIER**

"And how long have you known the plaintiff?"

Janine looked up at Athanson's face and flashed him her most dazzling smile. It had the same effect on him that it had on all men, with the partial exception of Sherlock Holmes. She crossed one leg over the other, letting her knee peek out from under the hem of her black skirt. Magnussen had insisted on her wearing black to testify. He thought the judge would be more likely to take her seriously. She had complied from the waist down: black skirt, black sheer hose, black pumps. But under the black suit jacket she had on a royal blue shell. You had to have a pop of color. Even in court.

"Ms. Watson first engaged my services on February 3," Janine said. She kept her eyes on Athanson's, maintaining the smile. Magnussen was sitting out there at the defendant's table, but he'd told her not to look at him during the trial, and that was one order from him that she didn't mind following.

"And what kind of services did you perform for Ms. Watson?" Athanson replied, expectantly.

"I was employed as a legal secretary," Janine said, gently tugging at the hem of her skirt. "But I also performed ... other duties for her."

Athanson was trying hard not to smile. Janine would have loved to know what expression was on Harry's face at this moment, but it was too dangerous to risk a glance. It was a pity there wouldn't be video.

"Please describe the nature of these other duties," Athanson said, with a smug glance up at the judge on her perch.

"Well you know I was also the receptionist," Janine answered. "She's never had one, can you imagine? Till I came along she was answering her own phones. And I was taking a course every Monday night to become a notary public. Also I kept track of the office supplies and reordered them when they were low. That ought to be done by an office manager, but she didn't have one. It says Harriet Watson and Associates on the letterhead but she's the only lawyer in that firm and I'm the only staff. She kept me pretty busy."

Janine smiled into the silence. Athanson's face got just a shade paler. She could imagine Magnussen starting to sweat. More than usual.

"And were those your only...additional duties?" Athanson repeated.

"Oh!" Janine said. "Now that I come to think of it, no."

Athanson barely stopped himself from sighing with relief. "Could you tell us what the other duties were?"

"Filing," Janine said. "Oh my God, the filing. You want to see her office. Even now there's accordion folders stacked up that high you'd be afraid to stamp on the ground too hard for fear of triggering an avalanche. I helped her out with the filing, because there's no way she'd catch up to it all herself. I stayed late a couple nights a week doing that."

"Filing," Athanson echoed, weakly.

"Yes," Janine said, settling back in the chair with a smile. "Filing."

After the pause had extended itself into a silence, Janine looked up at the judge. "Is that all, your honor? Have I finished?"

The judge turned her gimlet eye on Athanson.

"Mr. Athanson," she barked. "Have you any further questions?"

"Yes, your honor," he said, snapping back into life. "If those were your only duties...what explains that supplemental payment of one thousand, four hundred and seventeen pounds and thirty pence transferred from Ms. Watson's bank account to yours?"

"Well I've told you, haven't I?" Janine said, widening her eyes as if in astonishment. "I stayed late two nights a week working on filing. Naturally I got time and a half for that. And the notary public course, she paid for my time there as well. She said it was easier for the bookkeeping if she entered all the overtime into a separate time slip and paid it separately at the end the month. I've got copies of all my pay stubs," Janine offered, with a guileless smile. "Itemized and everything. I'd be happy to show you."

Athanson's eyes whitened in panic. 

"Young lady," said the judge, severely, "this is not the time to enter new evidence. Mr. Athanson, your witness has answered your question. Either ask a new question or sit down, but you have exhausted this one."

Athanson took a deep breath.

"And it is your sworn testimony," said Athanson, glaring at her as best he could, "that none of your paid duties were of a...a...a sexual nature?"

Janine put a hand across her heart and drew back from him with a gasp of shock that was echoed by many of the spectators--and, more important, many of the jurors.

"How dare you?" Janine cried. "How DARE you? I work for a living, sir," Janine said, half rising from her seat, trembling in anger. "I'm trained. I'm experienced. I am good at my job. People don't pay me just to sit at the front desk and smile at men like you. I worked hard for that firm. Ms. Watson paid me well but by God it was no more than what I was due. Why would you ask me such a question?" she cried. "Because I'm Irish? Because I'm brown? Why?"

Athanson couldn't tamp down his temper in time. "Would you just answer the question--"

"I AM answering it!" Janine cried, calling down the powers of heaven to witness this outrage to her virtue. "Believe me, I'd no more put up with that kind of carry-on from my employer than you would. I may be a working girl, Mr. Athanson," Janine shouted at him, "but that does  _not_ make me anyone's whore!"

A wave of noisy outrage crashed through the courtroom, nearly drowning poor Athanson. The judge banged her gavel and called for order. In the confusion, Janine thought she could risk a peek or two. Magnussen had not moved; he was looking up at her with his dead-fish eyes, and Janine could imagine quite vividly what he was thinking. Harry, over at the plaintiff's table, had leaned back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest. She was holding onto her poker face just as hard as she could. But the look in Harry's eyes was so familiar. A kind of affectionate outrage; a sort of exasperated admiration. It's a shame and a crime the way you play them all, Janine fancied she could hear Harry thinking; but all the same it's fascinating.

* * * * *

Janine waited until the courtroom was nearly deserted to gather her things. Magnussen was gone; so was Harry. The only people left were the court reporter, tidying up until the next day, and a woman at the back of the room putting on her coat. Janine glanced at her on the way out. She was still half-hoping Clara might show up at one of these sessions. Janine was mighty curious to meet her. But this woman wasn't blonde, or glamorous. Mid-sized, narrow, with straight and boring brown hair in a straight and boring fall down her back.

Oh yes. It was one of John's friends, from the wedding. She'd worn yellow and been kind of tipsy. Molly. Molly Hooper.

Janine buttoned her jacket, shouldered her bag, and went out into the corridor. She burst through the double doors onto the steps. Night was falling, and the wind was brisk, but she had never felt more alive.

Until she reached the bottom of the courthouse steps, and felt his hand on her arm.

Janine spun around. It was Athanson who was gripping her; Magnussen had a distaste for physical violence. But he was one pace behind Athanson, watching him try to drag her into the shadows.

"Let go of me!" Janine shouted, at the top of her lungs.

"This is a pity, Janine," Magnussen murmured, adjusting his glasses. "There are perhaps one or two members of my staff in whom I have placed more trust than I have in you; but none of them have ever betrayed it in this fashion. There is no penalty on the books for such a crime. A new one will have to be invented."

"If you hurt me now," Janine said, "that's not going to improve your chances much tomorrow, is it?"

"I am not sure that I care," Magnussen replied, softly. "I am not sure that at this moment, revenge is not uppermost in my mind."

Athanson turned to argue. Janine took the chance to break his grip. Athanson let go; but there was another arm that went around her neck from behind. One of the security goons. He wrenched her nearly off her feet and shoved her up against the nearest wall.

"If you call for help," Magnussen hissed in her ear, "everything will come out. I will show you no mercy and hold nothing back."

"HELP!" Janine shouted.

Janine heard feet clattering down the steps behind her. Women's shoes, probably short stacked heels, and a little high-pitched yelp of surprise.

"You have sealed your own fate," Magnussen murmured.

"Get away from her!" shouted the woman. "Get away from her or I'll call the police. NOW!"

Janine turned her head. She couldn't get a good look at the woman; but she was pretty sure that was Molly Hooper's voice.

"Greg?" Molly's voice said, high and breathy and full of fear. "Greg, I'm outside the courthouse. Send someone quick. Magnussen and his lawyer are kidnapping one of the witnesses."

The security goon dropped Janine with a curse. At a nod from Magnussen, the three men began slinking away from her into the darkness.

"I don't want your mercy!" Janine screamed after them. 

Magnussen could not stop himself from turning around. 

"Do your worst!" Janine shouted. "Print what you like!" 

The tears finally came, but they didn't dampen the anger one bit.

"You've nothing on me!  _Nothing!_ You cannot do a damned thing to me, Magnussen, and you will NEVER touch me again!"

Janine launched a spit in Magnussen's direction. It didn't reach him. But it did accelerate his departure.

Janine started laughing. Molly pulled out her mobile phone again.

Five minutes later, when Janine was still laughing, Molly put a hand on her arm.

"Are you all right?" Molly said. "I can take you to a hospital, if--"

"No," Janine said, covering Molly's hand with her own. "I'm fine. I'm grand. Never better. Never." She took a long breath, and felt the hysteria finally flowing out of her. "Thank you. Thanks so much."

Molly smiled back at her.

"It was nothing," Molly said. "I just heard the noise and...well...I mean I do always carry a scalpel."

Molly drew something narrow and silver from one of her pockets. The tip was still corked. A ridiculous weapon. But the woman holding it was not ridiculous. Janine could see that, now, for the first time.

"Come on," Janine said. "Walk me home. Obviously it's not safe for me to be alone."

Molly ducked her head with a little nervous grin. "All right."

END CHAPTER THREE

 

 


	4. ABSOLUTELY MONSTROUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place five days before Chapter 3.

**FIVE DAYS EARLIER**

"Ms. Holmes," said the little gray-haired man in the curly white wig, "do you recognize this document?"

Marian Louisa Vernet Holmes drew herself erect in the witness chair, looking down on the little man through the bottom half of her spectacles. She took from him the long piece of white paper that he held out to her. The smugness on his face extended all the way down to his fingertips. Marian had always tried to be charitable toward those less intelligent than herself; but she could not bring herself to extend the courtesy to those who were less well-behaved. This category included the madwoman who had shot her youngest son, the blackmailing monster who had driven her to do it, and that blackmailing monster's idiot lawyer.

Marian took the document. She held it up to the light. That way everyone would see the paper vibrating slightly in her hand. She held it close with her left hand. She transferred it to her right hand and moved it slightly farther away. She took her time perusing it. 

"Yes," Marian finally said, removing her spectacles.

"Would you tell the court what it is, please?" said Athanson with a smile.

"It's a bank form requesting a cashier's check in the amount of one thousand, four hundred and seventeen pounds and thirty pence," said Marian.

"And whose account was this drawn on?" Athanson went on, bouncing a little on his toes.

Marian watched that frilly little neckerchief they all wore trembling a bit as he tried to contain his swagger of triumph.

"It was drawn on my savings account," said Marian, briskly.

"Will you examine the signature at the bottom of the document, please?" said Athanson.

Marian fumbled for her spectacles again.

"Take your time," murmured Athanson.

There were few things that irritated Marian more than being patronized by some young pup who would never in his life know half as much as Marian had forgotten. But she bore it stoically, this time.

"Is that your handwriting, Ms. Holmes?" asked Athanson.

Marian's head snapped up. She glared into his tiny little eyes.

"Certainly it is my handwriting."

Athanson blinked. He opened his mouth. Marian looked at him.

"Well?" Marian finally said, when she could stand it no longer. "Don't stand there catching flies, young man. Have you another question to put to me?"

"Objection," called out the lawyer sitting next to Harry. "Witness is leading the counsel."

The courtroom erupted in laughter. The judge brought her gavel down with a smart tap.

"I will have order in this courtroom," the judge insisted. "Mr. Athanson, please continue."

Athanson finally said, "I draw the jury's attention to Exhibit B, which compares Ms. Holmes's signature on the will that Ms. Watson made for her to her supposed signature on this document--"

"I beg your pardon, young man," Marian snapped. "There is no 'supposed' about it. That IS my signature. I signed that withdrawal form myself. Are you saying," she demanded, in high dudgeon, "that you doubt my word? Or are you doubting my competence?"

Athanson thrust a square of cardboard at her. On it were the two examples of her signature. Looking at them with a professional eye, she could certainly see the differences.

"Ms. Holmes, I believe you have published a book on the subject of handwriting and heredity," said Athanson, recovering a bit of his smoothness. "Can you solemnly state, under oath, that both of these signatures were written by the same hand?"

"Absolutely not," said Marian promptly. "Even the rankest of amateurs would instantly declare that the signature on my will was written with the right hand, while the signature on the withdrawal form was written with the left."

"Thank you," said Athanson. "No further--"

"A more advanced expert in the field," Marian went on, "would note that--"

"No further questions." Athanson repeated. 

"Ms. Holmes," rapped the judge. "Mr. Athanson has ended his examination of you. I must ask that you cease giving evidence."

Marian sat back, disappointed. "Certainly, Your Honor."

Athanson went back to his table, just barely preventing himself from breaking into a scurry.

That nice young woman sitting next to Harry sprang to her feet. She had on the same ridiculous wig, but it went better with her white hair, and she carried off the gown and the silly neckerchief with a kind of natural grace with which she must have been born.

"Permission to cross-examine this witness, your honor," said Harry's lawyer.

"You may proceed, Lady Smallwood."

Harry's lawyer glided slowly toward Marian's box.

"Ms. Holmes," said Lady Smallwood. "Do you still maintain that  _both_ of the signatures on this card are genuine?"

"Absolutely," Marian replied. 

Lady Smallwood's mouth twitched just once. Just a tiny little presage of the ghost of a smile.

"But how can that be, since they appear so different?" Lady Smallwood asked.

"As I was in the process of telling that very rude young man," said Marian, "a more advanced expert in the field would note that there are similarities between the two examples which hint, at the very least, of a strong familial tie between the two individuals. I'd particularly draw your attention to the drift of the T's crossbar, in both cases just barely touching the vertical, and the peculiar shared morphology of the four Es. But there are at least twenty-two other indications, most of them of a more techincal nature, though I would be quite happy to explain them if the court would indulge me."

Athanson sprang up. "Objection. Ms. Holmes has not been called as an expert witness."

The judge nodded. "Sustained. Ms. Holmes, you will please confine your answers to the facts of the case."

Lady Smallwood acknowledged this with a gracious nod. "Well, Ms. Holmes. Let me ask what you remember about signing the disputed document--the bank withdrawal form."

Marian cleared her throat. "Yes. I went down to the bank on Thursday, February 21, to withdraw the funds. It was unseasonably cold for that date, and the wind nearly took my hat off. Entering the bank I noted that the floor had been recently waxed--"

"I do apologize, Ms. Holmes," said Lady Smallwood, gently. "My question was posed too broadly. Let me rephrase. Why did you wish to draw this particular sum from your savings account? It is rather an odd number."

"If you count the pence," said Marian, "it is actually not an odd number. In fact it divides into two equal portions of seven hundred and eight pounds and sixty-five pence. I'm quite fond of that number. In its initial state it includes my second favorite two-digit prime and when divided in two it leads with my favorite single-digit prime. Pity about the extra penny, sixty-four is such a beautiful number, so many symmetries within symmetries, but I do apologize, I fear I am not answering the question which you so politely put to me."

Lady Smallwood smiled patiently.

"I requested that particular amount," said Marian, "because that was the amount that Mycroft told me he would need."

"You withdrew this sum at the request of your son Mycroft," Lady Smallwood confirmed.

"Yes. He said that he needed it for a belated wedding present."

Lady Smallwood raised an eyebrow. Well, of course Marian had seen it all immediately. The boys were always trying to hide their plots and schemes from her and they simply could not understand why it never worked. Of course she didn't always tell them when she'd seen through something. They had to believe in their independence. She wouldn't live forever.

"And he asked you for this specific amount?"

"Yes. He said that he would reimburse me at the end of the week, and he did."

"And you signed for it...with your left hand?"

"Yes," said Marian.

"Why?"

"Oh," Marian said airily, "I'm ambidextrous, you know. Saves time when you're writing on the blackboard. Of course I usually do sign with my right hand, to avoid just this sort of confusion. But while I was making tea on the morning of the 21st, I accidentally scalded my right hand, and so I had to bandage it. Naturally when my right hand is bandaged, I do all my writing with my left."

Marian folded her hands in her lap, the right over the left. The burn had healed, but there was still some redness around the knuckles. It had been her own idea. If she'd left it up to Mycroft, he'd only have wasted an hour coming up with some fiendishly clever twenty-step plan for disabling Marian's right hand without actually harming her. So she did the job herself. She knew what Mycroft was planning; and she didn't mind a bit. A little scald was nothing compared to what she'd gone through bringing Sherlock into the world, or what he went through after that bitch put a bullet into him. And if her boys' crazy plan was to work at all, it would be important to give the jury a simple, clear explanation of why, on the form authorizing the withdrawal of a very specific and particular but substantial sum of money from her own bank account, she had signed it in a way that might be mistaken--by an amateur--for a clumsily forged copy of her legitimate signature.


	5. TOO SOON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place five weeks earlier than the previous chapter.

**FIVE WEEKS EARLIER**

During her years as Sherlock Holmes's landlady, Mrs. Hudson had learned a few things; and one of them was that if you heard noises at the front door after nightfall, you didn't go out to investigate unless you were carrying a weapon. Just looking at a gun was enough to bring on a panic attack, and the cartel had ruined knives for her as well; so when the front door banged open and something trampled up the stairs that sounded like a herd of wildebeest, she grabbed the spray bottle she kept by her bed, stuffed her aching feet into her quilted slippers, wrapped herself in her dressing gown, and began carefully stealing into the hallway. 

The front door to 221B was wide open, letting in a view of the light-spangled street outside. It was raining. The entryway was a mess, mud and wet tracked everywhere. She went to close the door and discovered that it had been propped open with a copy of  _Introduction to Medical Jurisprudence._ _  
_

"Oh, Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson snapped, kicking the book down the front steps and pulling the door shut. She wished she were young enough to bound up the stairs and burst in on him; but she had to take them one at a time, and in the slippers she couldn't even really stomp. He of all people ought to know never to prop the door open. Even if you _weren't_ a consulting detective who couldn't take a breath of air without making a deadly enemy, you'd think  _anyone_ would know not to prop your front door open. It was her private opinion that the shooting had damaged his brain. Unless it was the drugs. Well, no. Come to think of it, Sherlock really hadn't been quite right since the day John asked him to be his best man.

Halfway up the stairs, she was nearly thrown into cardiac arrest by a terrific banging on the front door.

Mrs. Hudson froze. The banging stopped, then started up again, louder than ever. 

"Door!" shouted a man's voice, on the other side. "Come on, one of you! Open the bloody door so I won't have to kick it--"

Mrs. Hudson dropped the spray bottle on the stairs. In a burst of resentment-fueled speed, reached the door and flung it open. On the other side of it was Detective Inspector Lestrade, wearing a gray trenchcoat, and holding in both arms a square and apparently very heavy box.

"Oh," he said, brought up short. "Mrs. Hudson. I--I'm so sorry. I just--I've got something for Sherlock, do you mind my bringing it up?"

Mrs. Hudson looked at the box. Its coated cardboard cover was glistening in the rain, but the glare couldn't disguise the image.

"That's a bottle warmer and sterilizer," Mrs. Hudson said, folding her arms.

"Yes," Lestrade said, with a sigh. "Yes, Mrs. Hudson, well done, there's no getting anything past you, is there?"

Mrs. Hudson half-closed the door.

"Please," Lestrade said, shoving one leg into the remaining space. "Please just let me in, they're on their way here and we want this all set up before they arrive."

Mrs. Hudson gasped, clutching her hands to her chest. The door swung open. Lestrade barged on through.

"Rachel? Is John bringing her here?" Mrs. Hudson breathed, following him as he clumped up the steps.

"Maybe," Lestrade said. "Could you get the--"

Lestrade nodded at the door to the flat. Mrs. Hudson reached for the knob.

The sitting room was deserted. It looked just as it always did, apart from John's missing chair. But there seemed to be plenty of activity in the spare bedroom. Voices, male and female, all mingling together. It sounded like a very lively cocktail party being held in a very crowded room.

Mrs. Hudson followed Lestrade in.

In the center of the floor, a pile of wooden slats and spindles had just about come together to form a baby's crib. Molly held one of the corners together while Sherlock's poor old Mum leaned into it, tightening the last of the bolts. Sherlock's father knelt by John's old armchair, plugging a mini-refrigerator into the wall. Mycroft, in a three-piece suit and a pair of blue latex gloves, was inspecting the windowsill for dust.

"Sherlock never lets me dust in here," Mrs. Hudson said, as Mycroft lifted up two dirty fingertips and contemplated them sadly.

"Obviously," Mycroft replied. "Please fetch whatever cleaning supplies you have on hand from whatever remote location in which you store them. Neither this room nor the washroom comes anywhere near the recommended hygeinic standard for a bottle-fed infant."

"Mycroft Evelyn Holmes! Where _are_  your manners?" Sherlock's Mum said, standing up abruptly. "With Sherlock the way he is, it's a miracle anyone can even see the carpet. Anyway a little dirt is good for a child. It trains the immune system and guards against allergies. No, not by the window, there will be drafts. Over by this wall."

Molly and Sherlock's Mum pushed the crib into position. Molly knelt down to lock the wheels. After that she was off like a shot, dragging bedding out of the overstuffed closet. Lestrade had the bottle warmer out and was reading through an instruction manual the size of an encyclopedia. Mrs. Hudson watched, her heart beating a little faster, through the tears trembling in her eyes. A baby. Coming here. Coming to stay.

"Mrs. Hudson." Molly rushed up to her. "Mrs. Hudson, do you have a pair of scissors? All I can find are these," she said, holding up a gleaming metal contraption, "and they're tissue scissors, they're not meant for paper."

"Scissors," Mrs. Hudson repeated, a little foggily. "No, dear, I can't think of--"

"Never mind." Molly darted into the sitting room. When Mrs. Hudson peeked out, she saw Molly crouched on the floor near an old anatomy textbook, removing pages from it with a scalpel. 

Oh well. Sherlock had a million of them, and presumably Molly knew what she was doing.

Mycroft, under his mother's baleful eye, continued to dust the windowsill with an old undershirt of John's that he had dredged up from the bottom of the closet. When he was finished, he stalked out of the room, in his finicky way. Molly rushed back in, holding a roll of sellotape in one hand and something long and papery in the other. She dragged the armchair to the doorway, climbed up on it, and began taping one end of whatever it was to the inside of the lintel. She stretched over to the other corner, leaning at a perilous angle, and affixed the other end. Just as she got the tape on it, she gave a squeak, and lost her footing.

Everyone made a motion toward her; but only Lestrade got there in time. It wasn't a soft or graceful landing; but he did catch her. And when they looked at each other, Mrs. Hudson thought to herself, there's more than one thing changing around here.

"Do you think she'll like it?" Molly said.

Lestrade looked up at the top of the doorway. A string of glossy paper letters, cut out of the pages of Sherlock's old anatomy book, read "RACHEL'S ROOM." In the point of the M you could see most of a human eyeball, sectioned to show the component parts. The R seemed to be mostly taken up by a person with his skin taken off, the muscles red and raw underneath.

"Yeah," Lestrade said, putting an arm around her. "Yeah, she'll love it, Molly. It's really...unique." 

Mycroft reappeared on the other side of the doorway. He had one arm around the furry brown neck of a stuffed bear nearly as big as Molly.

As the rest of the group stared at him in shock, he said, "A thing cannot be 'really unique.' It is either unique or it is not. One can no more be 'really unique' than one can be a little bit pregnant."

"Mike," said Sherlock's Dad. "What on earth is that?"

Mycroft dragged the bear into the room. "It is very important for her future development," he said haughtily, "that this operation not compromise Rachel's ability to form an attachment."

"Mikey," said Sherlock's Mum. "You know you can't put that in the crib with her."

Mycroft tucked the bear into a corner, then turned around with that half-smile that Mrs. Hudson found so irritating.

"Shh!" Molly hissed, suddenly. "They're coming! Hide!"

Everyone scattered. Mrs. Hudson backed up into the closet, whose door now wouldn't quite close. Lestrade turned off the light too soon, and Molly banged her head trying to duck under the crib. The sound of her and Lestrade whispering to each other finally died away. The footsteps came closer.

"What the..." John's voice said. "Why is there a spray bottle on the stairs?"

"Presumably Mrs. Hudson dropped it," Sherlock's voice answered.

"And why is it full of...hot sauce?"

"Because it's cheaper than mace and safer than a tazer," said Sherlock, opening the door. "Well, Rachel," they heard him saying in the sitting room. "Thank you for coming to me. I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend and colleague Doctor Watson."

John's laugh drifted in from the sitting room. "You mad bastard."

"Language, John," Sherlock said. 

"We don't have to worry about that for another few months yet," John said. "Although I suppose we don't want her first words to be 'crime scene.'"

"Or 'tobacco ash,' " Sherlock added, as their feet moved down the hallway. "I thought we'd settle her in your bedroom, it's cleaner. Not  _much_ cleaner, of course, but--"

Sherlock reached through the open doorway flipped the lightswitch. Everyone jumped out. Well, everyone but Mycroft, who merely let out an aggrieved sigh.

"WELCOME HOME!"

Oh, the look on John's face. It made it all worthwhile. The long nights, the strangers with guns, the danger, the insanity, the constant complaints from neighbors, the bribes to the health inspectors, the rent that was sometimes in arrears for months...looking at John, with that tiny little baby in his arms, her eyes wide open in that moment of shock right before they all begin bawling, Mrs. Hudson didn't mind any of it now. And there was Sherlock behind him, pretending to be annoyed, but secretly just as proud as any mama could be.

The first of Rachel's screams split the air. John left off gaping in astonishment and turned back to Rachel, hushing her, rocking her ever so gently in the crook of his arm.

"Oh my dear," said Mrs. Hudson, stealing up to John and putting a hand on his arm. "May I?"

John smiled, blinking. His eyes were wet, but he didn't want anyone to notice.

"Of course, Mrs. Hudson. Don't--don't forget to support the head."

Mrs. Hudson took charge of the little bundle, not without rolling her eyes. "There you are. That's right. That's right. You're home now, aren't you? Don't you worry about a thing. We've got you."

John drifted over to the crib, touching it tentatively with one hand.

"Do you like it?" Molly said, almost fearfully. "I know it's a bit old-fashioned--"

"No, I--I love it, Molly," John said, turning round. "It's perfect. I..."

Mrs. Hudson heard a soft cough behind her. She turned to see Sherlock's mum looking at her, politely, but rather territorially.

"Would you like to hold her?" Mrs. Hudson said.

Well, she didn't need to be asked twice. While Sherlock's mum carried the prize over to her husband, John approached Mrs. Hudson. 

"I...I know we didn't ask for permission..." he began. "Things being--as they are--it's all had to be a bit--clandestine--"

Mrs. Hudson patted him on the shoulder. "No need, dearie. Of course she can stay. I'm delighted. I do have to ask, though..."

Mrs. Hudson glanced around to see that everyone else was occupied. Sherlock was submitting to a long discourse from his mother about proper care and feeding &c. Molly was talking to, or rather listening to, Sherlock's dad. Lestrade, God help him, was trying to make conversation with Mycroft, while somehow managing to keep accidentally touching the enormous bear every time Mycroft paused for effect.

Mrs. Hudson leaned closer to whisper to John. "Where's Mary?"

John's face contracted in pain for a moment. Then he smiled.

"I don't know exactly," he said. "And I don't care."

Mrs. Hudson nodded. She laid a hand confidentially on his arm.

"It's painful, I know," she said. "But these things happen. It was only to be expected. It was a lovely wedding and all," she said, darting a meaningful glance in Sherlock's direction. "But I knew you wouldn't last. I knew it the day you first told me about her. I knew it was too soon."

END CHAPTER FIVE 

 


	6. LEGALLY DAD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place two hours before the previous chapter.

**TWO HOURS EARLIER**

The sound of Harry's boots traveling at a good clip across the marble floor of the corridor was bad enough. John didn't want to look up and see her driving at him through the shadows like an oncoming storm. He hunched over on the bench, looking down at Rachel nestled in her infant seat. She'd been tucked up with so many baby blankets that all he could see was her face and one tiny hand. She was sleeping peacefully. Well, at least someone involved in this escapade wasn't about to throw up.

"Where is he?" Harry demanded, right into his ear.

John's head snapped up. "He went for a piss."

"That was ten minutes ago. Unless he's suddenly developed prostate cancer--" 

"I know, I know--"

Harry set her briefcase down on the arm of the bench.

"Look," Harry said. "Lady Smallwood pulled every string she can still grasp to fast-track this thing. The judge is sympathetic, or he wouldn't be here; but the longer you make him wait for his pipe and slippers the crankier he's going to get. If Sherlock does not walk into that courtroom in the next five minutes we're going to have to go ahead without him."

"Fine," John sighed, hauling himself to his feet. "Take Rachel in."

"Godspeed," Harry said, as he headed off to the gents'. She picked up the infant seat, slung it over one arm, grabbed her briefcase with the other, and headed toward the double doors.

The men's loo had actually been locked; Sherlock had jimmied it, and now the door wouldn't close behind him. The tiled room was bleak and empty; but the window was not open, and there was no trace underneath it of the rain that would surely have blown in if Sherlock had escaped through it.

"Sherlock," John said.

"He's not here," called a voice from inside the stall.

"Come out of there, Sherlock."

"No."

John dropped to the ground and squirmed under the gap beneath the stall door. When he stood up, he saw Sherlock crouched on top of the toilet tank. He had his rain-soaked coat gathered round him like the cloak of a fallen warrior and the last time John had seen Sherlock's face that pale it was because he'd just been shot in the chest.

"Listen, Sherlock," John said, holding out his open hands. "We don't have to do this now. Harry's drawn up two sets of papers. If you're not ready, just say so. We could always do a two-parent adoption later if you wanted to."

"Ready," Sherlock snorted. "I'm not ready. You're not ready. Nobody's  _ready,"_ he rattled on, with increasing speed and twitchiness. _"_ What human being could possibly  _be_ ready? Do you have any idea--John--do you have  _any_ idea of the risks involved? No. You don't. You don't think ahead, you don't  _think,_ period. She hasn't even nursed for the recommended six months. Her immune system will be compromised. I store petri dishes in that fridge full of germs that would take out an entire city if they got loose--"

"No you don't," John said. "Because I threw them all out, along with all your syringes and your burners and your glass pipettes and that little plastic baggie that you were saving for a special occasion. From now on you'll do your science at St. Bart's and your drugs nowhere. We agreed on this. You said yes."

"She's so tiny," Sherlock muttered, running his fingers through his disordered hair. "I've dissected cats that weighed more than Rachel does. And she can't--do-- _anything._ If someone didn't feed her she'd starve. If someone didn't change her she'd rot in her own filth. If no one came to find out why she was crying she'd just go on doing it until she passed out. She can't survive without looking after and you want me--you want ME--to be the person standing between her and a miserable death?"

John couldn't help smiling just a bit. "Well. One of the people."

"Are you  _insane?_ " Sherlock cried, with a quite genuine note of hysteria.

"Possibly," John said. "But you knew that already."

"There are so many things," Sherlock gasped, struggling for breath. "So many mistakes I could make. So many things I could do--things I DO do, every day--that could lead to disaster. I could drop her. I could step on her by accident. I could put her down somewhere and forget to go back for her. I could forget she's even in the flat, John, I forget  _you're_ in it sometimes, and then what if I--what if I--I mean what kind of father  _are you_ that you want to risk your own daughter's safety by letting   _me_ anywhere near her?"

John folded his arms and gave him a few seconds of his very hardest stare.

"So you get it now," John said. 

"Don't start babbling, John. Get what?"

"You get how dangerous this is."

"That's what I'm telling--"

"Risk. You're damned right it's risky. It has to be risky. I don't need to beat up junkies or get thrown in a bonfire to keep my life interesting, Sherlock. I'm a father. That is all the risk I will ever fucking need."

Sherlock nodded, his face still white with terror.

"So whether you do or you don't come into that courtroom with me, let's have no more  _shite_ about how I deliberately fall in love with murderous lying psychopaths because I'm addicted to _risk_."

Sherlock twitched his head away. "I told you, John. If I hadn't made her believe that you might still love her after all she'd have shot both of us right there in the sitting room. For God's sake don't believe _anything_ that I said to you that night if I said it in front of Mary."

"So you knew it was shite."

"Of course I knew it was shite!" Sherlock shouted.

"So you know you're not a murderous lying psychopath, then," John said. "Just because I love you, that doesn't mean that's what you are."

Sherlock opened his mouth, but nothing came through it.

"I'm going into the courtroom," John said. "You can stay here if you want. But don't think that just because your name is not on that paper, you will not be responsible for Rachel. You live with me, you live with her. Live with a baby long enough and you start caring for her. Care for her long enough and she becomes yours. Law or no law."

John let the door of the stall swing shut behind him.

With every step he took toward those double doors, he felt less and less certain that there was anyone behind him. If he turned around, Sherlock would only disappear. But as he stopped before the doors, he heard Sherlock breathing, very close behind him.

John waited, without turning. Sherlock drew up next to him. Without looking at each other, each of them put one hand on one of the doors, and pushed them open together.

END CHAPTER 6

 


	7. CRADLE WILL ROCK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place ninety minutes before the previous chapter.

**NINETY MINUTES EARLIER**

"Allow me," said John. Swooping in before the tuxedoed waiter could touch it, John pulled out Mary's chair. Mary, lowering herself onto the seat of the chair with a deliberation as provoking as it was provocative, looked over at him with that little covert smile, the well-we're-sharing-the-fun-even-if-they-don't-get-it look that always used to prod his heart into that one extra beat. John pushed the chair in and moved around to seat himself, while the waiter stood back deferentially. Though he was dark-haired and tallish, he was certainly not Sherlock Holmes in disguise.

Sherlock and his disguises. That was the one moment at which John could just stand there and enjoy pitying the poor bastard: when Sherlock 'disguised' himself. They were always such pathetic disguises, always so transparent. You just could not hide that face. With a hoodie shadowing it or a ridiculous Sharpie moustache or a clergyman's collar beneath it, it was always persistently and loudly the face of Sherlock Holmes. The only way Sherlock ever stayed incognito was by stopping people from looking at his face at all.

By dressing up as a waiter, for instance. That disguise had worked quite well, for a time.

Mary leaned over the table. Her bare shoulders gleamed softly in the warm and dim light. It seemed to John that since the Episode, Mary had taken to wearing brighter lipstick and a touch more eyeliner; but Sherlock had told him he was wrong about that. You're just more sensitive to it now, he'd said. You actually notice more details because you're paying a different kind of attention.

"The Landmark," Mary cooed, leaning over conspirationally. "This must be quite the special occasion."

John smiled. "Well. It is a special occasion, the two of us being outdoors after nightfall."

Mary laughed. She reached over and patted John's hands, which were folded in front of him on the table. 

"I'd never have believed you could get us in here," Mary said. "It must have been hard enough to get a table the first time. And...didn't they ban you?"

"A bit," John said, disengaging his hand and reaching for his water glass. "I had to get Harry to make the reservation. And give them a fake name."

Mary laughed, covering her mouth so as not to disturb the murmuring hush around them. John chuckled along with her.

"But seriously, John," Mary said, drawing back and giving him her Serious Look. "Why now? It's not our anniversary, you know."

"No," John said. "I just felt...well. I just thought that now, you'd feel safe leaving Rachel for a couple of hours, and--you do feel safe doing that, don't you?"

Mary waved a hand at him. "You're such an old woman, John. It's fine. Rachel's just fed, she was asleep when I left, a chimpanzee could take care of her for the next two hours. I'm sure Harry can handle anything Rachel thows at her, drunk _or_ sober. I mean she basically brought you up, and you turned out...all right."

She gave him that sardonic half-smile that had, in the early days, reminded him a bit of Sherlock. John mirrored it.

"I'm so glad you made that call," Mary said, softening into tenderness. "It really meant a lot to her. And it's good for you having her in your life again, in spite of everything. I mean even if it is all true. I like Harry. I really do. Mind you," Mary said, unfolding her napkin, "I do think she's just a tiny bit mad, but then for you that's a plus, isn't it?"

John tried not to grimace at the twinge of heartburn Mary's expression brought on.

"Why mad?" John said.

Mary had noted that her wineglass was still empty and was scanning the vicinity for help. "Well I know all lawyers are a bit..."

"Anal-retentive," John suggested.

"Thank you," Mary said, glancing back at him. "But I still think your sister is the only lawyer in the world who'd make you sign a release form before she agreed to sit for your child."

John sighed. "Poor Harry. She's taking all this very hard."

Mary nodded, her mouth drooping in that little frown of sympathy. "I know. But you're a big help to her, John. It means so much to her that you trust her, even for just this one evening."

The sommelier finally materialized. John let Mary choose the wine; she was good at it, and she never liked his choices. He reached inside his jacket pocket for the envelope.

The sommelier vanished. As Mary drew a breath for another pleasantry, John reached across the table and took both of her hands.

"My goodness," Mary said. "But Dr. Watson, I hardly know you."

John smiled, a bit bashfully.

"What is it, John?" she said, softly, encouragingly.

"I just..." John said, pressing her fingers. "I just...we can't obviously get engaged, you know, but now Rachel's born and everything's settled I wanted to come here properly, without any surprise Sherlockery--"

Mary laughed, returning the pressure. She looked so happy, so beautiful, smiling in the lamplight. Just as she had the first time.

"I wanted us to come here and...to do what I  _should_ have done, the way I  _should_ have done it, the first time."

Mary's eyes shone with tears. John let go of her hands, reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a fat white envelope with "MARY WATSON" written on it.

"It's for you," he said, placing it, with an appropriate mixture of anxiety and confidence, on the table in front of her.

Mary picked it up, with a little gasp of surprise, and opened it expectantly.

John watched her take out the wad of white paper inside, and unfold it to its full size. 

He watched her face.

Nothing changed. There was no movement, not an extra breath, not a sudden blink, not a hair drifting out of place in response to a barely perceptible movement of the head. For the long moment that it took her to read the document, assess it, and consider her options, she betrayed absolutely nothing. All the same, John fancied he could see Mary selecting, from the range of possible options, the best emotional response for the situation. And after that, her hands began to shake, and her chin began to quiver.

"What is this?" she demanded, no longer quite so considerate of the diners around them. "If this is your--or Sherlock's--idea of a joke--"

"It is not a joke," John said, grimly. "I no longer have a sense of humor. Not where my family is concerned."

"I don't understand," Mary cried, as the tears quivered and began to fall.

"They should put that on a T-shirt," John said, bitterly. "Since you don't understand, let me explain. You hold, in your hands, which are shaking in such a finely calibrated and utterly convincing way, a form declaring that you voluntarily terminate your parental relationship to Rachel Adelaide Watson and grant me, the aforenamed Doctor John Hamish Watson, biological father of Rachel Adelaide Watson, sole custody in perpetuity. You will now sign it in the presence of a witness. I brought a pen, and there are plenty of waiters."

Mary glanced around, thought about making a scene, then decided it was too dangerous. "You want me to give up custody of my child."

"Our child," John corrected. "Yes."

Mary's hands came down on the table, in anger that might or might not have been genuine.

"You want a divorce too, I suppose," she snapped.

"I don't need one," John said, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair. "We were never married. If you will recall, Agnes Grace," John said, unable to hold back the venom now, "you married me under an alias belonging to a dead woman. You forged the marriage license."

Mary opened her mouth to argue.

"Don't even try. Well, our marriage was always void. I just made it official. Filed the papers the day Rachel came home from the hospital. I don't understand why this surprises you. Harry sent you three notices informing you of the proceedings and giving you the opportunity to lodge a protest."

"I never--" Mary shouted. She saw the expression on John's face and stopped dead.

"You never got them, you say," John replied. "I can't think why."

"You BASTARD!" Mary cried out. She was courting attention now, hoping she could shame him into backing down. She had not counted on the highly developed English ability to ignore the unpleasantness of others.

"Sign the form, Mary."

"If you think there is any way in hell that you can force me to sign that form, John Watson, you are  _so_ much more of an  _imbecile_ than I ever imagined."

John reached into his satchel and drew out a much larger envelope. He tossed it across the table to her.

"Nobody's forcing you, Mary," John said. "I'm paying a  _lot_ of money to do this in a public place like civilized people. You will sign the form, though," he went on. "Because if you don't sign the form, there will be a custody battle."

Mary opened the envelope. She pulled out the first 9 x 11 glossy photo. A flicker of panic crossed her features. She put it back in the envelope and pushed the envelope away from her.

"So this is what Magnussen had on me," Mary whispered. And then, glancing up at him with a look of pure hatred, "You told me--"

"This isn't what Magnussen had on you, Mary," John said. "This is what Mycroft  _has_ on you. And that's what will be entered into evidence, if we have to go to court. I'd rather avoid the unpleasantness, for Rachel's sake, but I do like our chances. The court usually takes the mother's side, even now; but then most mothers haven't killed quite as many people as you--"

Mary leaned over the table so fast John almost knocked his chair over drawing back from her.

"What about the people  _you've_ killed?" she said.

He stared right back at her. "At least I can say under oath," he said, "that I didn't enjoy it."

Mary drew back, bursting into tears. 

"All those beautiful things you said to me," she sobbed, her hands falling helplessly onto the table. "About the problems of my past."

"Yes," John said, reaching inside his jacket for a pen. "Sorry. That was me lying. I told you they were prepared words."

Mary picked up the form and tore it savagely in two.

"I don't believe you," she said. "You've never in your whole life been able to pull anything like that off. Harry told m--"

Mary seemed to be having some difficulty swallowing whatever it was she had been intending to say. While she looked daggers at him, John drew another copy of the form from his inside pocket.

"I brought extras," John said. "I thought, with the scene you'd feel compelled to make, you'd probably need to destroy at least one prop."

He picked up the torn halves of the first one and crumpled them into a ball, then laid the second copy down on the table.

"You will sign the form," John said, desperately struggling to maintain a neutral tone and keep the lid on the furnace of his anger. "You will sign the form and then you will leave the restaurant. You will not return home. You will have no further contact with me or with Rachel. Is that clear?"

"Don't do this," Mary pleaded. "I know you're angry. I know that. But we can get through this. We can work it out. I love you, John--"

"You  _never_ loved me!" John shouted. "And you never loved Rachel either."

"How can you say that?" Mary screamed.

"Because it's TRUE!" John roared back.

Well, they were going to ban them both for two years, this time. So what.

"You know, you're right, Mary," he went on, seething. "I've never been a good liar. But by God I've learned it from the best. You," John said, pointing at the waiter hovering anxiously nearby. "Come over here, please, this will only take a minute and then we'll both go. Please watch her sign the form, and then sign on this line right here."

Mary's whole body was taut with unexpressed rage. But she picked up the pen.

"Your real name," John said.

Mary wrote it out in the blank.  _Agnes Grace Rowena Addesley._ AGRA. The only piece of the truth she had ever actually told.

John nodded at the waiter. He hesitated for a moment, then signed.

She shoved the form across to him as if she were handing a mortgage back to the banker. John looked down at the signature, and felt a piece of his heart die.

He lifted the form with one hand. Before he could look up from it, Mary was gone.

John whipped out his mobile and began running for the exit, leaving a trail of flustered wait staff in his wake. He punched the letters in as he went. 

CWR IS GO

He burst through the doors of the restaurant that he would never, not if he lived to be a hundred, patronize again. He turned to the left. He walked, as quickly as he could without attracting attention, around the corner. He opened the door of the cream-colored Honda civic that was waiting at the curb.

Harry was at the wheel. He glanced into the back seat. The infant seat was there, rear-facing of course. A mirror had been mounted above it, in which, with a rush of relief, John saw a reflection of Rachel's tiny face.

"She signed it," Harry said.

John handed her the form. She looked it over from top to bottom.

"She signed it, Harry, I told you," John said, irritably. "Let's go. The more time we give her to think--"

Harry put the form into a folder and tucked it into her briefcase.

"Sherlock?" she said.

"Meeting us there," John answered. At the moment, he would be shadowing Mary, to make sure she didn't double back.

"On we go then."

She turned the key. The car eased out cautiously into traffic.

"This is technically legal, I suppose?" John said, after they stopped at the first light.

"Technically," Harry said. "If Mary were in a position to challenge it things might get a bit sticky, but technically, yes. She appointed me Rachel's temporary legal guardian just before you left."

John shook his head.

"Let this be a lesson to you, John," Harry said, turning the wheel as the car swung right. "Never sign anything without reading it first."

"Spoken like a trusted professional," John said. And then, after a few moments of grim silence, "How's business?"

Harry smiled for the first time that evening. 

"Terrible."

END CHAPTER SEVEN


	8. THE SECOND STAIN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place two days earlier than the previous chapter.

**TWO DAYS EARLIER**

"What  _is_ colic, exactly?" Molly said, as she pulled the test tube out of the centrifuge.

John shook his head, raised his hands, let them fall on the edge of the laboratory table. "Nobody knows," he said. "It's just what they call it when the baby screams all the time. Every pediatrician has a different theory. That is the one thing I can say I've thoroughly enjoyed about Mary's pregnancy," John said. "Reading all the books. I always thought Sherlock Holmes was the most arrogant prick in the whole of London town. But let me tell you, he cannot hold a candle to some of these celebrity pediatricians."

Molly unplugged the tube. The milk solids had settled at the bottom. She inserted a pipette into the liquid at the top and drew some out, then squirted it into a petri dish lined with test paper. The paper took on a bluish tinge. Molly and John watched it spread.

"Some pediatricians don't think colic exists," John said, nervously. "They think it's a cultural thing. That we don't keep our babies close to us often enough. Some think it's because we keep them too close to us too much of the time. There's only one thing they all agree on, and that is that all of the  _other_ pediatricians are dangerous psychopaths who shouldn't be allowed to handle children."

Molly pulled over another petri dish, laid in another piece of paper, and gave it another squirt. The test paper began to turn a bright magenta color.

"It's apparently not unusual," John went on, rather desperately, "for the baby to respond differently to the father than to the mother. Various theories about why, each mixed with different proportions of bollocks, ego, and common sense. Still." _  
_

"Still," Molly said, looking at the test paper in the second petri dish. The violet stain was darker in the center, with tiny filaments spidering out to the edges.

"It just seemed...odd, to me," John said, with a little tilt of his head. "Just...too consistently odd. If a thing can be consistently odd. That she's just so much quieter for Mary than she is for me. Mary says it's because I'm too tense. Well. Course I'm tense. I was tense _before_ any of this happened. It could be that. It could definitely be that. It could just be..."

"Stop, John." Molly burst out. And then, after running her free hand a little twitchily over her brown hair: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But...stop. Please."

John realized that although he had been looking at Molly the whole time he was talking, he had not actually  _seen_ her until this moment. With her hair pulled back from her high forehead, her eyes large and dark, her lips pressed together in anger or horror or...or whatever...it somehow made him think of statues he'd seen in museums he'd been dragged to, white marble heads with blank but unsettling eyes, allegorical figures of wisdom or justice or...some kind of remote half-divine figure, gazing with pity upon the idiot mortals who couldn't understand what she knew.

Molly's mouth finally opened. Her narrow chest heaved as she took in a big, shaky breath.

"The pink here on this first test paper," Molly said, "indicates the presence of alcohol. In a very low concentration. But definitely present."

John nodded, clenching his jaw so as not to speak.

"The second test paper," she said, pointing to the second dish, "is treated with a coating that reacts with 3-methylmorphine."

John stood very still for a moment.

"Codeine," he said.

Molly nodded.

"The sample from that bottle," John said, slowly, pointing to a plastic bottle that sat upright next to the petri dish. There were still a few dregs left in it, looking as innocent as ever. "That bottle, which Mary made up last night, because it was her turn to do the night feedings," John said. "That sample. You just detected the presence of codeine in the formula that you took out of that bottle there."

Molly compressed her lips and nodded. Her jaw was clenched. John thought he could actually see her fighting her urge to just run and hide and avoid the unpleasantness certain to follow.

"Rachel is quieter when Mary's tending her," Molly said, laying the pipette carefully down on the table, "because Mary's lacing the formula with cough syrup. It acts as a mild sedative."

"Mild!"

John couldn't stop himself from punching the lab table very hard with his right hand. He regretted it instantly. Not only because he nearly broke his knuckles, but because Molly shrieked and put her hands over her ears.

It was hard. It was very hard. But he got himself under control.

"I'm sorry, Molly," he said. "I won't--I'm working on not--I'm sorry."

Molly dropped her hands and nodded, biting her lip slightly.

"Will you do me a favor, Molly?" John said, as quietly as he could. 

"Anything," Molly said, sadly.

"Will you please text Harry and tell her what you just told me."

Molly nodded. She pulled out her mobile and bent over it. 

John turned away. If he looked at that bottle for one more second he would drive straight home and do something certain to ruin all three of their lives.

"I have to report this, John," Molly said, softly. 

John shook his head.

"Infants die of codeine intoxication, John. Under six months old there's no safe dose. They metabolize it more slowly so the effect is cumulative. This can't go on. It can't go on."

"It won't go on," John said.

Molly met his hard stare with one of her own.

"I have to report this."

"You can't, Molly," John said.

"Why?" Molly demanded. 

"Because Mary is a psychopath." 

"Isn't that the point?" Molly replied.

"The point is," John said, "that if you report this, and we get a call from child protection, I don't know how she will do it, but I guarantee you that whoever the agency sends round to us will leave the house convinced that  _I_ am the one who is drugging my child. You don't live with her, Molly. I do. I know what she's capable of. I don't mind telling you that it terrifies me."

"Then how can you leave your daughter with her?"  

Molly wasn't shouting, exactly. But there was something hard, and obstinate, and forceful, in the sound of her voice that surprised him.

In the silence, John's text alert went off.

It was from Harry. It read, "YOU WIN. STARTING PROCESS NOW."

He texted back, under Molly's unsettling stare, HOW FAST?

In the long silence that followed, every hair on the back of John's neck stood up. His stomach began churning.

He had never been so relieved to hear his phone make that little ping.

Harry again. SMWD THINKS 2 BUSINESS DAYS.

"Two days, Molly," John said. "Mary will be out of the picture in two days. Give me that long. I promise Mary won't be alone with her." Even as he spoke, his fingers were moving over the screen of his mobile. STAY WITH US?

"What happens in two days?" Molly said, beginning to be a little less certain.

The response came back from Harry. WILL BE THERE TONIGHT. MAKING UP SHOPPING LIST NOW. PLEASE BUY 2 LITRE BOTTLE OF APPLE JUICE AND CONCEAL IT SOMEWHERE IN MY ROOM.

John let out a sigh of relief and looked up at Molly.

"In two days, we terminate Mary's custody rights, Sherlock and I adopt Rachel, and Rachel and I move in to Baker Street."

Molly blinked at him.

"You're moving a baby into that flat?"

John nodded.

"In two days?"

"If all goes well."

They faced each other across the lab table, and the two round flat dishes, and the first and second stains.

"You're going to need some help," Molly said.

 END CHAPTER 8


	9. LEARNING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place one day earlier than the previous chapter

**ONE DAY EARLIER**

Trafalgar Square itself was a bad place to meet; all tourist spots were lousy with surveillance cameras and one couldn't know whether Magnussen had insinuiated one of his own amongst them, or perhaps tapped into one of the state-sponsored ones. But crowded chain restaurants  _near_ tourist spots were ideal; nobody was paying any attention to anything except for churning the food out as fast as they could, and there was no chance of anyone overhearing anything. This week their scheduled meet-up was at a Pret a Manger that had been crammed into a storefront between the square and St. Martin in the Field's. It was Harry's turn to arrive first, and John's to come in eight minutes later and pretend they had encountered each other by chance.

It was so odd, this planning in advance. Like the days before cell phones, where you had to just tell someone where you would meet them and hope for the best. They could text each other only rarely and always in code. Sherlock had written the codes out on hard copy, sat there while they both memorized them, and then burned them. John had enjoyed the look on Harry's face as she stared at the series of meaningless acronyms. "What," she'd finally said as she looked up at Sherlock, hands spread wide in bewilderment. "Are we going back to DOS?"

Harry had found a round two-person table far enough back from the windows and was nursing a smoothie. A half-eaten chicken tikka sandwich lay in its wrapper before her. She was staring out the storefront window, as much of it as she could see, and thinking about something very absorbing.

"Hey."

Harry looked up with a start that John thought was genuine. She waved at him, invited him to sit, and then returned to her smoothie, watching his face.

"Anything to report?" John said, trying to lighten the mood.

Harry sighed.

"Not really," she answered. "I mean, I can report that reading the paper is not a whole lot of fun for me right now, but you knew that."

Initially, John and Sherlock had celebrated every vicious headline that popped up in every one of Magnussen's scandal sheets. The more thickly he laid it on, the more business Harry lost as a result, the bigger the damages would be in the end. Magnussen's legal team either didn't realize this or, more likely, couldn't rein in their client, who seemed to think that the way out of this situation was to publish more and more stories about Harry's drinking, embezzling, and womanizing. He seemed to be under the strong impression that he could make these stories true by repeating them. And in a way, at least temporarily, he was right. Outside the closed circle of confederates, people believed them. A picture of Harry, with a tumbler full of amber liquid in one hand and brunette in her lap--a long-haired brunette who was not facing the camera, but whose rear view was instantly recognizable to both John and Sherlock--had appeared early on with the caption A LITTLE TOUCH OF HARRY IN THE NIGHT, and it had been reblogged and retweeted and God knew what else to the point where Harry had just stopped going online altogether. I know the truth, she'd said; but that doesn't make it any easier to watch people laugh at me.

"Is the legal part of it any fun?"

Harry finally perked up slightly. "Oh yes. I am enjoying that. So's my attorney."

John nodded. "And as to the other...matter..."

Harry put down the smoothie. John began to have a bad feeling about this.

"I'm sorry about this, John, but the more I think about it the more uncomfortable it makes me." 

"Oh Jesus, Harry, not now--"

"On the list of things I did not go to law school in order to do, taking an infant away from its mother is pretty high up there."

"Have you been talking to Mary?" John demanded.

Harry's eyebrows lowered and she gave him the Stare.

"I'm supposed to be gaining her trust while she thinks she's getting me into her debt, remember?"

"Yes, but the plan was not for you to be brainwashed by her."

"Brainwashed!" Harry snapped. She glanced around furtively, then dropped her voice. "I am not  _brainwashed_ , John. But I do see her with Rachel, and..."

"And she seems like the perfect mother."

Harry shook her head. "It's not like that. But there is a connection. I see it."

"Yes. Mary is wonderfully connected to Rachel as long as there's anyone watching."

Harry picked up a plastic fork, gestured impotently with it, then threw it back down on the table. It did not make any kind of a satisfying clang. She glanced at the smoothie; but that was also in a plastic cup.

"It's just...it's just really hard for me to believe," Harry said, "that you could carry another person inside your body for nine months, spend hours bringing her out of it, and not feel  _some_ connection to her. Even if you are a psychopath."

"Yes," John bit off. "It was hard for me to believe too."

Harry looked at him, pained and uncertain.

"Look," she said. "Six months ago you and I were...you know...a phone call on Christmas, on birthdays  _maybe_ , you get engaged and you don't even tell me about it and I don't meet the woman till after she's married you. Or not married you, not legally anyway, but you know what I mean. You walk back into my life and I look around at it now and what's left of it? My reputation is trashed, my practice is crashing, everyone who reads the papers thinks I'm an alcoholic whoremongering thief, and instead of thinking to myself, Christ, what have I done, I'd better crawl out of this hole while I can still reach the opening, I'm talking to you about engineering a custody caper which is legally questionable  _at best._ I may or may not have just ruined myself forever," she went on, "just because it broke my heart to see you reduced to asking me for help."

John spread his hands and tried to look as if he was suitably grateful, instead of so on edge and so angry that he was nearly on the point of throttling her. "I understand that, Harry. I appreciate everything you've--"

"You are the only person left in the world that I really love," Harry said, swallowing her tears. "And I would do anything for you. But at these moments I think to myself that I don't know who you are. It's been so long. We're both so different. I don't  _really_ know who you are right now any more than you really know what I'm like sober. I mean it hasn't even been a year yet.  _I_ don't really know what I'm like sober. I maybe  _think_ I know you but that's based on just...memories...from another lifetime, and half of those memories you don't even have."

The anger curdled into panic. Not anxiety, panic. Combat-quality Afghanistan-style panic. With hyperventilation.

"Oh Jesus," Harry said, reaching suddenly toward him in a way that was the opposite of helpful. She dropped her hands when she saw him pull back. "John, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This whole double life thing has made me paranoid. Don't--don't--it'll be all right. I'll help you. I will. Just...just..."

John closed his eyes. He put his hands on the table. He grabbed onto his current surroundings as hard as he could. He waited until he could no longer hear his own pulse. He opened his eyes.

"You don't know," he said, slowly, "what it's like."

"No," Harry said quietly. "I'm sure I don't."

"I wake up next to her and I look over at her and at first it just feels like it always felt and then I remember. Then I doubt what I remember. I go through six different realities before I even get out of bed in the morning. She loves me, she doesn't love me, she loves Rachel, she doesn't love Rachel, I love her, I don't love her any more, I never loved her. The one thing that I know, for sure, is that I can't stand this much longer. There are days I think I can't stand it another minute. I stand it somehow anyway but I don't know how long I can go on."

Harry laid her hands flat on the table and looked into his eyes. 

"John," she said. "I know it's hard for you right now. But this is about Rachel's future. Think what it was like for us when Dad left."

The panic was coming back again.

"It would...it would be better for Rachel if we could...I don't know...if she didn't have to lose her mother completely. If--"

"You don't  _get it!_ " John burst out.

"If we could do this in the open and above board--"

John slammed one hand down on the table.

"If we could work something out," Harry went on desperately. "Visitation maybe, with supervision--"

The plastic chair fell over as John burst out of it. When he was finally able to perceive his surroundings, which had up to that point been rushing by him like a blur, he was standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square. One lost man among millions of the temporarily and willingly displaced. No more at home, anywhere in this city, then the most casual tourist in the place. Living in a hall of mirrors and loving someone impossible and newly and painfully cut off from someone whose importance to him he had never, until this moment, truly understood. 

He craned his neck to look up at the blue sky, and the pigeons circling above him.

Don't cry, he told himself. Soldiers don't cry. Doctors don't cry. Big boys don't cry. Little boys don't cry.

You're lost. But you can find your way home. Don't cry.

It took him two or three hours. But John did, slowly, find his way...if not home, then back to the office. And through the rest of the afternoon. And back to the car. And back to the house in the suburbs. And back to the front door. And back up the stairs to the nursery, where Mary sat in the big rocking chair, reading a book while Rachel dozed on her lap.

I would give everything, he thought, just to be able to trust my own eyes at this moment.

"Hello," Mary said, looking up at him with a sunny smile, and then back down to Rachel. "Daddy's back!"

John bent over to tickle Rachel's nose. It scrunched up a bit. Her eyes opened just a tiny bit, just to little narrow slits, and then closed again as she heaved a drowsy little sigh.

"Was she quiet for you?" John said, as he lifted Rachel out of her arms. 

"Like a dream," Mary said, smiling. "I've got the magic touch. Oh, don't look so sad. You'll get the knack of it. Look, you're holding her and she's still quiet!" Mary said, encouragingly. "You're learning!"

John looked from his daughter's face to Mary's, and forced himself to smile. 

"I suppose I am," he said.

END CHAPTER NINE

 


	10. CONTROLLED BURN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place two weeks earlier than the previous chapter.

**TWO WEEKS EARLIER**

A long coat covers a multitude of sins. 

John had heard Sherlock make this observation more than once. It was never more true than now.

They had arrived hours ago at the St. Pancras tube station, looking like two ordinary men on their way to dinner. Well, all right, Sherlock was terrible at looking ordinary; but certainly nobody would have guessed at the array of tools that Sherlock had secreted inside the false lining of his coat or that John was carrying a gun in one pocket and a pair of black balaclavas in the other.

It was 2:30am now. Hours ago, while Midland Road was deserted, Sherlock and John had donned the balaclavas and insinuated themselves through a pre-existing hole in the tarpaulin stretched across the scaffolding running along that side of the building. There they sat, saying nothing and moving little, waiting for the dead of night. They were close enough together that John could feel the warmth of Sherlock's body along one side of his own; but neither made a move to touch the other. Sherlock was all business tonight, and John's body had known neither release nor relaxation for weeks.

Sherlock put a black-gloved hand on John's shoulder and squeezed once. That was the signal to begin.

Following Sherlock, they picked their way through the scaffolding until they were right up against the brick wall of the massive dark edifice that consumed the entire space between Midland Road and Ossulston Street. They pressed themselves up against it and sidled along like spiders until they finally reached the loading dock. Sherlock scanned the vicinity, then grasped John's gloved hand. Keeping close to the bricks, they scuttled around to reach the great metal automatic doors. In the wall to the left of them was an ordinary metal door with a keypad. Sherlock punched in a string of numbers. The handle clicked.

John's heart beat faster as they slipped inside. He shut the door softly behind them. It was only the loading bay. Crates were still stacked along the sides, waiting to be unloaded. Still. One barrier down.

Sherlock whipped out a pocket torch and began playing the beam along the walls and ceiling. The light flashed along the edges of a double automatic door set into the opposite side of the loading bay. It was frosted glass. Sherlock's light stopped and trembled a bit on the keycard reader next to the doors, then returned to the glass. 

John followed Sherlock over to the automatic doors. Sherlock took off his coat and laid it on the ground. Underneath he was in black from head to foot. With more light, John could have properly appreciated all the lines and curves outlined by all that clinging black fabric. For now, he contented himself with appreciating how quickly and quietly an effortlessly Sherlock worked.

Reaching into the lining, Sherlock pulled out a long, narrow-handled tool with a blade at the end that flashed cruelly in the torchlight. Sherlock pressed one gloved hand against the glass, then etched a wide circle around it with the blade. He scored the circle over and over, patiently repeating the same motion. Finally, he bent his arm just a little. A flat disk of frosted glass tipped backward onto his hand. John grabbed it by the edges and set it down gently next to Sherlock's coat.

Sherlock carefully worked his head, arms, and shoulders through the circular opening he'd created in the door. He bent over, placing his hands on the floor on the other side of the door. John watched, with a mixture of amusement and frustration, as Sherlock walked himself forward until his legs were in the air, then finally drew them through the opening. His feet dropped down on the other side of the door. For a moment he looked as if he might start doing push-ups. Instead, he turned around and motioned John to come through after him. 

John stuffed Sherlock's coat through the opening. It made a clank as it fell. Sherlock let out a hiss of annoyance. There were, after all, security guards, though obviously not enough to canvas the entire facility. Budget cuts.

Sherlock swung his coat on. John got his head and shoulders in. He bent over at the waist, but couldn't reach the floor. 

Even though John couldn't see Sherlock's face, when Sherlock's head cocked in that exasperating way, he could instantly imagine the expression of disappointment and annoyance beneath the balaclava. Sherlock stepped abruptly up to the door, grabbed John's flailing hands, and pulled him through the opening, without any attempt to minimize the amount of bumping and bruising involved.

John landed in a heap. Sherlock pulled him to his feet. For a moment their heads were so close that John could feel Sherlock's breath against his lips. Then they began to search.

Sherlock, who had a detailed plan of the building in his head, was not at a loss for long. Now that they were in, it was easy. The place was deserted. There were security cameras, of course; but they were Mycroft's responsibility. Mycroft could not manage the burglar alarms from a remote location but he had hacked into the sprinkler system. 

Further and further they went into the bowels of this hulk, until finally Sherlock stopped at a metal door with no window. There was a legend on the door reading "MS24253c799." John heard Sherlock make a little gasp of satisfaction. It was a traditional lock, with a traditional keyhole. Which would yield quite easily to the traditional burglar's tool that Sherlock drew from the lining of his coat. The narrow rod easily penetrated the opening; and after a few seconds of rapid movement on Sherlock's part, the catch clicked and Sherlock drew the door gently open.

They closed the door behind them. The lock clicked. As they entered the room, the lights went on. 

Sherlock muttered something unflattering about Mycroft. But the room was windowless. It was the size of a tennis court, and lined on all four sides with metal shelving that went from floor to ceiling. There were four free-standing rows of shelving along the east and west sides, leaving only a narrow empty space in the center. The shelving was full of gray archival boxes, each with its own incomprehensible label. Obviously it had all been catalogued, though who knew what system had been used. 

Maybe Sherlock knew. He was prowling along the aisle along the east wall, reaching up at the various boxes and muttering. Then he stopped, let his hands drift into the air in anticipation, and sprang. He seized a box on the top shelf, then fell over backward against the shelves behind him. But Sherlock was strangely unconcerned about all the rattle and clang he had just caused. He crouched on the floor, his coat spreading around him like an ink stain, and popped the top off the box. Inside was a rank of brown folders, each with a label in the upper left corner. He pulled out one of them. John saw the pencil scrawled on the label. It said **K 13.5/8.15.7.13.5.19x3a**.

"What the hell does..." John whispered.

Sherlock unwrapped the string holding the folder closed, looked inside, then handed it to John.

John reached in and pulled out the contents.

It was mostly paper--some glossy photos, some yellowing printouts. There was also a CD-Rom and a flash drive. But John didn't need to know what was on them. The hard copy was enough. The photos were all of Mary. Mary from above; Mary from half a mile away; Mary not realizing she was under surveillance as she blew the head off a man kneeling in a courtyard--John couldn't place it exactly, though the man had a turban and it might have been either Afghanistan or the Kashmir--or cut the throat of a man reclining in his own private hot tub inside his own private villa on the coast of what could be the Riviera or the Black Sea or Lake Placid for all John could tell. More than a dozen pictures, more than a dozen kills. Some of them multiple. She was versatile; she was ruthless; she was, apparently, swift. If she lost a weapon or hadn't brought one she could make do. One time with an electrical cord around the neck. One time with an electric hair dryer. One time with fire. That one, it was hard to see how many people she'd done in. It just showed Mary walking away from the blaze. He wondered what the rectangular building behind her had been before she set fire to it. He hoped it wasn't a school.

"John."

It was the first time he'd heard Sherlock use a normal tone of voice. John looked up. Sherlock had taken off the balaclava. His bright eyes were fixed on John. And they had the same look in them that John had seen there when he stood up from that wheelchair and made that excruciatingly long walk down the corridor toward the woman who was not Mary Morstan.

John pulled off his own balaclava, and answered the unspoken question.

"I'm fine," he said. "It's..."

John gestured wide with both hands. Photographs slid onto the floor. He was surrounded by it now. All those dying or dead eyes looking up at the mother of his child, one instant before she turned and walked away from a job well done.

"It's nothing I didn't  _know,"_ he said. 

But seeing it, he didn't say. Seeing it is so much worse. How little it ever means to her. How there is no trace, on any of the dozen Marys in these photos, of anger or pain or guilt or even arousal. How this was just something she did, day after day, and if it did anything for her then she kept that to herself. Even if the only other people in the room were dead.

John scooped up the pictures and shoved it all into the folder. He walked out of the aisle into the empty space in the center of the room, and dropped the folder on the floor.

"Are you sure?" Sherlock had followed him out, and stood behind him, looking over John's shoulder.

John nodded. 

"This is what we set out to do," John said. 

Sherlock accepted this. John thought that Sherlock was finally beginning to appreciate the irrational logic of love. Back when he had loved Mary, John often daydreamed to himself about scenarios in which he saved Mary from danger--abduction, snipers, maniacs with dirty bombs, muggers in dark alleys. His desire to protect her, to save her from all the shadowy forces he knew existed in the world, had been a source of pride and pleasure for him. And although the mother of his child no longer deserved it, and although the woman he thought he had married never in fact existed, it would in some way soothe the scorched place Mary had left in his heart to free her from Magnussen at least.

As John stood there, despondently contemplating all this, another folder slapped down on top of it. Then another and another. 

Sherlock was going through the shelves, pulling out boxes, glancing into them, removing folders and tossing them onto the floor. As John watched him, Sherlock stopped, looked at the gray box he held in his hands, and then threw the whole thing onto the pile. 

"Sherlock?" John said. 

"The visual media are ranged along the west wall," Sherlock called. "Bring it over here. We need it for kindling. Film and tape go up like that."

He snapped his fingers. The gloves dulled the sound; but it propelled John into action anyway.

John ducked between the stacks and found the west wall. The shelves held box after box of everything from reel-to-reel audiotape to 16-mm film to microfiche to slides. John filled his arms and took a load out to the center of the room, where the pile was rising higher. Sherlock ripped the guts out of a couple VHS cassettes and festooned the heap of boxes with it. John brought back more and more. They had abandoned caution entirely now, both running from stack to stack gathering armfuls of information. Information that had controlled lives and broken hearts and tortured the souls of countless people, important and unimportant alike. Information once efficiently organized, now tumbled pell-mell into a mountain of broken cardboard and split envelopes and disemboweled cassettes and unspooled film. Information that had once been money and power and a license for perversion. Information that had now been transformed into fuel.

When the pile was a foot away from the ceiling, Sherlock stopped adding to it. John tossed a last load at the bottom. Sherlock put a hand on his arm. John came to a halt. He was still breathing fast, and his heart wouldn't slow down.

"Shall we?" Sherlock said.

John looked at him. Sherlock was smiling. For the first time in a long time, John felt like smiling back.

Sherlock reached into the inside lining and pulled out a sleek silver cigarette case. He fished a lighter from some other secret compartment. Sherlock lit the cigarette, tucked it between his lips, and took a long drag on it, eyes closed. With a little quiver of pleasure, he removed the cigarette and exhaled.

John watched the smoke drift through the air. Sherlock handed it to him.

John, of course, did not smoke. He was a doctor and knew better. Still. He lifted it to his lips and breathed in.

Coughing, but fortunately not retching, he walked up toward the pile, the cigarette still burning in his hand.

"Open the door," John said, "and stand in the hallway."

Sherlock looked as if he were about to argue. But he did as John asked.

John took a long last look at the funeral pyre they had built for Mary's past.

He fired the burning cigarette right into the heap.

At first the red glow dimmed. Then, just as John was thinking what an anticlimax this was all turning otu to be, a sheaf of paper near it blossomed into flame. He stood there watching the flames grow bigger, catching on to more paper. A coil of film went up all at once, like a blazing serpent. 

"Let's GO!" he heard Sherlock shouting. "NOW!"

John tore himself away from the flames and ran.

Down the corridor, through the maze, as the fire alarms finally began ringing. Back through the hole to the other side of the looking glass. Through the loading bay doors into the street and then running, running, running, through the narrowest and most deserted streets they could find.

From all over the city, it seemed, the sound of fire engines began. A police car turned down the street they were on, heading for the blaze. Sherlock took John by the arm and dragged him into an alley between two blocks of houses. While the car rushed by, all sirens blaring, John fell backward against the brick wall. Sherlock braced himself with his hands, leaning over, his face nearly invisible in the darkness. 

"Too busy," Sherlock panted, in a voice barely above a whisper. "Wait here till the fire's out. It won't take them long. Mycroft only disabled the sprinklers in that one room. They are a priority one location for all emergency services. Mycroft assures me there will be no other damage."

John could see Sherlock's chest heaving. The headlamp of a passing car flashed sidelong into the alley, picking out a gleam in each of Sherlock's eyes. Silver flashed in little curves amongst the dark tangle of his hair, then winked out. 

John lunged forward. His hands went around the back of Sherlock's neck and pulled their heads together.

Sherlock leaned into the kiss, grappling at the buttons on John's coat. There was a brief awkward moment while Sherlock took the gloves off, and then his hands were inside the coat, where nobody could see them, committing their multitude of sins.

"Sorry," John whispered, as Sherlock's mouth moved along his neck. "I know it's not safe here. Probably not even legal. I just--I just--"

Sherlock pressed in closer, sliding his hands inside the waistband of John's pants.

"Of course it's not safe," Sherlock murmured into his ear, as his hands took a firmer grip. "Of course it's not legal. We are so far on the wrong side of the law we may never find our way back again."

Sherlock kissed him again, then drew back long enough to finish the thought.

"We just set fire to the British Library, John," Sherlock murmured. "We are now damned for all eternity. We may as well revel in it."

END CHAPTER 10


	11. THE THIRD STUDENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place one day earlier than the previous chapter.

**ONE DAY EARLIER**

For a place that saw as much traffic as Paddington Station, the cafe at the British Library was not so very bad. Mycroft the man would infinitely have preferred the upstairs restaurant, but Mycroft the British Government knew better. The slower the service, the more open space between tables, the less ambient noise, the greater chance there was of being observed, noted, and possibly eavesdropped upon. In the cafe, nobody waited on you, nobody on the serving line would remember your face, and there were dozens of highly animated conversations going on simultaneously. Mycroft picked up the plastic tray on which the young lady behind the counter had just placed his tea and scone and carried it over to a tiny round table. The place was packed to the maximum.  

From his perch Mycroft was able to distinguish and follow seven separate conversations just at the tables in his immediate vicinity. When he saw his target take his place in line, he was almost disappointed. The music of Benjamin Britten had been a favorite obsession of his as a child, and the purple-coiffed young woman at the table to his immediate left was only half-way through her elaboration of a new theory about the composition history of  _Peter Grimes._

"Excuse me," said the white-haired man standing next to his table. He was a tall man, and though he had been gradually losing muscle mass over the past two decades give or take a year, his breadth of shoulder and erectness of carriage still told the story of his past athletic triumphs. He held in his blue-veined and mottled hands an unusually worn brown plastic tray bearing a cup and saucer that had been mass-produced in a factory in Malaysia with industrial-grade ceramics and glazed with the same process used on brake pads. "Mr. Holmes?"

Mycroft looked up, and indicated the other chair. The older man set down a tray and pulled over a chair. They looked down at their respective meals, neither making eye contact.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Gilchrist," Mycroft murmured, sipping at his own tea. "I apologize for the venue, and the quality of the tea."

"I'm used to it," said the other man.

"So you must be," Mycroft replied. "You've served this august institution nobly and well for thirty-seven years, three months, and eighteen days. You must have seen many public policies come and go, leaving cafes and gift shops and interactive blogs in their wake."

The older man sighed and gulped at his tea. "A fair few."

"It could be worse," Mycroft replied. "You could be at the British Museum."

The older man laughed hollowly. Mycroft glanced up at him. He kept looking, in spite of his instincts, at the watery and weak blue eyes and wrinkled features of the man opposite. As a boy, Mycroft had loved the British Museum, and the British Library, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and all of those queer storehouses of the lost memories of a dead empire. He could remember at the age of six watching Mum and Dad speaking with one of the curators, an older white-haired man not unlike his current lunch date, and thinking: that's what I want to be when I grow up. I want to wear a rusty tweed suit and a bow tie and spend my life in the back rooms, the warrens and oubliettes and storerooms hidden from the visitors, learning what I like and becoming one of those old men who know everything. Sometimes in his office he would lean back in his chair and close his eyes and brush from his mind the seventeen different international problems he was resolving at the moment and try to remember being that boy. The boy whose idea of paradise on earth had been so naive, so odd, but so very, very clear.

"Mr. Gilchrist," Mycroft said. "I'm looking for something important. It's something which I know, from other references to it, must be held at the British Library; and yet I cannot discover it through any of your finding aids, electronic or otherwise. It is not part of any searchable database. I have reason to believe it forms part of a special collection originally gifted to the museum some fifteen years ago by an anonymous donor, and to which materials are added on an ongoing basis, though none of them appear to have been purchased through acquisitions. I wondered if you could help me find it."

Gilchrist looked into his teacup.

"I will of course do my best to help you, as I would any of our patrons," Gilchrist said, carefully. "What is it that you wish to find?"

Mycroft took out a small pad of white paper. He wrote down "K 13.5/8.15.7.13.5.19x3a." He passed the paper to Gilchrist.

Gilchrist's eyes blinked rapidly. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. He shook his head, first gently, then more firmly.

"You are dealing, at this moment, Mr. Gilchrist," Mycroft returned, bisecting his scone and reaching for the clotted cream, "with a reasonable adult who has a proper respect for the national treasures which it is your privilege to guard and cherish. Unfortunately I have not the energy to search this vast edifice myself, nor is it possible to request through the usual channels that an operative be assigned to track your movements within the building as you go about your day. Tasks like these," Mycroft went on, spreading the clotted cream rather thickly on one half of his scone, "generally fall to my younger brother. As our mother used to say, Mr. Gilchrist, I am a scalpel and my brother is a meat cleaver. We're both sharp and both deadly, but only one of us is any use in a surgical operation."

Gilchrist set down his cup with a bit of a clatter. Some tea sloshed over the side, leaving a light brown stain on one of his cuffs.

"I would not ask for your help," said Mycroft quietly, "if I did not believe that I can protect you. And even if I could not...what have you to fear, really?"

When Gilchrist looked up, he was on the point of tears. Mycroft found himself very nearly moved.

"What so many people fail to understand," said Mycroft, in as soothing a tone as he could muster, "is that one's faults and mistakes and little shames are of course hugely important to oneself, but of comparatively little consequence to anyone else. You are approaching the last decades of a fine career in your chosen field, Mr. Gilchrist. No one can doubt the intelligence, the love, the dare I say intellectual honesty with which you have always carried out your work here at the library. Let us suppose the cheating incident were to be made public--let me see--forty-one years after the fact."

Gilchrist's hands began to tremble. He removed them to his lap, out of Mycroft's line of sight.

"There would be no public scandal," Mycroft went on. "My goodness, Mr. Gilchrist, who in the wide world would take the slightest interest? A knowledge of ancient Greek was once the true mark of a gentleman; now even Latin is an arcane mystery known only to an ever-dwindling few whose peculiarities render them, from the point of view of the commercial world, entirely useless--and, for consumers of our mutual friend's media, entirely tedious. _He_ has nothing to gain by publishing your shame, Mr. Gilchrist. It would sell no papers. And he is, as he is so fond of remarking, above all a businessman. It suits him to  _threaten_ to expose you, because that makes you useful. To actually  _do_ so would end your usefulness to him."

Gilchrist looked away from Mycroft's gaze. He said nothing.

Mycroft let out a soft sigh of disappointment. He consoled himself with a bite of his scone. It was heavenly. Everything else about England and his life in it might have changed since he was that little boy in the British Museum; but clotted cream remained ambrosial.

"It comes to this, then," Mycroft said, a bit more sharply. "I know what he knows. I have the same proof he has. I may not have a media empire but I know how to reach every civil servant and every librarian and every scholar whose good opinion matters to you. And if you refuse to give me the information I require, I can and I will do you  _far_ more damage than  _he_ would ever know how to do."

Gilchrist sat up straighter in his chair. His brows drew down, and his jaw set, and for a moment he looked like a younger man.

"I am afraid I cannot help you, Mr. Holmes," Gilchrist said, quietly but firmly. "I won't be bullied."

"Won't you?" Mycroft replied, leaning back a bit and beginning to stir his tea.

The noise of the cafe washed over them as they sat there, the young man and the old one, each thinking something very mixed and very complicated about the other.

Gilchrist withdrew a small notebook--a lined paper notebook, with a spiral binding--and began sketching. As he worked at it, Mycroft though the could see light coming back to those weak blue eyes. He was not a brave man, Mr. Gilchrist. One could not expect it. He had been one of those who cheated out of fear and desperation rather than laziness and entitlement. But as he finally straightened his spine and threw off the pressure of Magnuseen's invisible hand, something like courage seemed to be kindling in him. It was a little like watching Tinkerbell come back to life after drinking the poison.

Tinkerbell. If only their parents had never taken them to _Peter Pan._ If only Sherlock had never seen Mycroft sitting up in his seat and clapping his hands, smiling through his childish tears. Sherlock himself had never believed in fairies.

Gilchrist tore off a page and left it by his tray. A glance was sufficient to confirm that it was a map of the relevant floor of the library, the treasure spot marked with "MS24253c799." Before Mycroft could draw breath to thank him, he was making his halting way toward the exit. 

Mycroft returned his attention to the map.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The Krogstadt Collection was not, thank God, housed with the manuscripts or the rare books. It was not part of the regular collections at all. It appeared to occupy what had probably once been a storage room near the center of the building and the physical plant. Mycroft had expected this, but he was very glad to have it confirmed. Sherlock had become overinvolved in the Magnussen matter. It was, even to Mycroft, understandable. Sherlock had finally come to admit the true nature of his relations with John; and John was currently packed full of rage and anguish, as explosive and lethal as any terrorist bomb. It was getting harder and harder to make Sherlock understand the value of patience and time. The law was a slow and sometimes a clumsy instrument; but it always won in the end.

Mycroft did agree with Sherlock that the operation itself was necessary. But he was already planning out how to accomplish it without collateral damage. Sherlock was quite talented within his limited range. With a not unreasonable amount of luck and skill, the burn could be done without destroying anything that did not already belong to Magnussen. Mycroft was glad to know that. Sherlock himself cared little for things that weren't modern; and he was desperate. Even if Magnussen's 'vaults' had been situated smack in the middle of Illuminated Manuscripts, Sherlock would have happily gone in and torched it all. And that would be a crime worse than murder.   
  
END CHAPTER 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gilchrist's character and backstory are borrowed from the ACD story "The Three Students," in which Holmes resolves a potential cheating scandal involving a Greek exam at a university which is never explicitly named.


	12. WHY I MARRIED HIM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place the night before the last chapter.

**LATE THE PREVIOUS EVENING**

"Oh my stars," said Alfred, as he opened the door to the kitchen. "Both of you here? Has someone died? Has there been a terrorist attack? Marian, what's going on?"

Mycroft and Sherlock, sitting at opposite ends of the table, gave each other one of their Looks. Marian just made that little click of annoyance. Poor old Dad had missed the boat again somehow. It was hard always being the slowest, and the last, and the one who had to keep saying "But I don't understand." Not that he would give it up for the world, his family. But Alfred did feel for that nice doctor of Sherlock's. Married and all as he was, Alfred could see it in the way he looked at Sherlock. He had caught the bug, poor man.

Marian should never have taken his name. Sherlock Holmes this and Mycroft Holmes that; the name Holmes would be famous through the ages now when all he'd ever done was struggle through Cambridge in a middling sort of way, land a cushy civil service job, and marry a beautiful genius who, for some reason he had never fully understood, had chosen to make her life with a dullard like himself. It should be Vernet, the name on everyone's lips. That's where the boys got it. Art in the blood.

"Alfred," said Marian, waving him in. "Come sit. We need your help."

"Now that's something I don't hear often," Alfred said, sitting down in the remaining chair. "Well I'll do what I can, love, only don't expect too much."

In the center of the table was a light brown envelope, a little bigger than a sheet of A4 paper, inside a clear plastic envelope. All Alfred could see about it that was at all interesting was a curious scrawl in pencil in one corner. It was a letter followed by a string of numbers.  **K 13.5/8.15.7.13.5.19x3b.**

"So what's this then?" Alfred said, rubbing his hands. "The key clue to some sinister and bloody mystery?"

Mycroft raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. Sherlock closed his eyes in shame. Alfred rather enjoyed the embarrassment he caused his children. It was the only payback he allowed himself for all the trouble and pain they'd given him.

"The envelope itself," Mycroft said, "is curious. The sharpness of the corners and edges indicate that it was only recently put into use."

"This legend here," Sherlock said, pointing at the pencil scrawl, "was written by someone right-handed with a soft-leaded pencil whose point was badly in need of sharpening. It was not done in haste, but--"

"If you look over here, dear," Marian broke in kindly, smoothing out the plastic and directing his attention to the verical 1s. "There's just the slightest bit of blurring, indicating that the writer's hands were not perfectly steady."

"Drink?" Alfred suggested.

The boys scoffed. Marian shook her head. "I shouldn't think so, Alfie. Look how all the numbers are so neat and straight in a perfect horizontal line."

"And yet," Mycroft butted in, "there is no trace of the slight horizontal flaring one sees at the bottom of the strokes when someone has laid a ruler underneath. Therefore the legend was written out freehand by someone for whom such tasks are routine."

"Combine the attention to detail and the visible pride taken in the neatness of such a comparatively unimportant and low-profile task," Sherlock said, leaning over the table and grabbing the handle of the antique magnifying glass laid by Marian's elbow, "with Mummy's observation about the slight blurring and what does it suggest?"

Sherlock watched Alfred's face expectantly. After a moment of confusion, Alfred said, "That he was cold? Shivering, maybe, while he wrote?"

A hiss of irritation from Sherlock. Mycroft merely shook his head. Marian winked at him.

"Really, Dad," Sherlock snapped. "I know there's little chance of your winning any prizes, but do please try to make an effort with the questions."

"Leave him alone, Sherlock," Marian said gently. "He's on the right track. Yes, Alfie, the poor man's hand was shaking. But as the shaking interferes neither with the shape nor the line of the numbers we may infer that it is a chronic problem for which he has learned to adjust. A problem, I might add, familiar to both of us."

"Ah," said Alfred. "Old age."

Marian patted him on the shoulder. "We all get there in the end, don't we, love?"

Alfred and Marian smiled at each other. Mycroft gave an embarrassed cough.

"We haven't tried to lift prints from it," said Mycroft, "because the envelope must be returned to the place from which it came in absolutely pristine condition. Even through the plastic there are some...fifteen or twenty trifling other little deductions to be made from the envelope itself--"

"Twenty-three," Sherlock cut in.

"Please excuse Sherlock," Mycroft said smoothly. "He's competitive, poor child, and it makes him prone to exaggeration."

Sherlock kicked at Mycroft under the table. Mycroft stifled the yelp.

"But apart from the fact that the envelope has been stored in a cool, dry place," Mycroft went on, "that it has never at any time held more than a single sheet of paper, that the string closure on the reverse side has been unwound and rewound at least twice in the past twenty-four hours, and that the envelope and the string closure were, between ten and twelve hours ago, handled by a man with a congenital glandular condition which produces copious and continuous perspiration--"

Alfred made a face. Marian saw it, and laughed.

"Could we be serious here for just a moment, Mummy," Sherlock said. "Lives are at stake."

He was in a bit of a sulk. He always was, when Mycroft got to the deductions before he did.

"Lives are always at stake, Sherlock," Marian said. "The point is, all these deductions are all very well but they don't tell us what we really want to  _know_ , Alfred, which is where this folder came from before it was brought to his home."

"His home?" Mycroft said. "But this came from--"

"Of course his home," Sherlock shot back. "Magnussen doesn't bring documents to his office. John and I discovered  _that_  fact the hard way."

"He doesn't keep them at Appledore either," Mycroft replied. "And I seem to recall you and John discovering an even  _harder_ way to uncover  _that_ fact." _  
_

For a moment Alfred was afraid that Sherlock was really going to strike Mycroft. He'd had rages like that as a child. He was so much younger, and yet always so much stronger, that Alfred always felt protective of Mycroft--even though he knew well that Mycroft was the one baiting Sherlock into swinging for him. That was one skill Sherlock had never fully mastered. How not to let other people get him into trouble.

Instead, Sherlock's lunge across the table stopped just short of Mycroft's head. 

"We know," Sherlock said, quietly but viciously, "that there are no documents permanently stored at Appledore. I assumed that Appledore, which is on an enormous property in an isolated location to which only he and his staff have access, and which he could alter in any way he liked, was the only logical place for him to store the documents. Obviously I was in error. But  _so were you._  What's more, you made the error first and for a much longer time."

Mycroft's face turned red. Alfred wondered, wearily, if Mycroft was going to try holding his breath until Sherlock gave in. It had never worked.

"Boys," Marian interrupted. "Back to the problem, please."

Sherlock and Mycroft subsided into their respective chairs, chastened.

"Yes, Mycroft, it is true that this envelope came to us, originally, from Magnussen's office; but you must remember these are very unusual circumstances. Ordinarily Magnussen wouldn't want anyone to see the document apart from himself and the victim. Sherlock is right. When Magnussen wants a document he can't send for it to his office; it would have to be handled by at least four people before it reached him, and there would be entries recording its arrival in at least one and possibly three different logs. Either he has it brought from the remote storage site directly to his home by one of the many employees he keeps on retainer..."

"Or," Mycroft said suddenly, "he collects it himself from a location in the city and carries it back with him."

"Yes," Sherlock said, springing forward again, this time less aggressively. "But not from the storage site itself. He knows you're watching him and he wouldn't want you to trace him there. There must be a third point, located at one of the few spots in the city not currently under surveillance, to which the document is brought, and probably dropped, from which Magnussen later retrieves it. There would be a thousand ways to do it. Probably he never uses the same drop point twice."

"I concur," Mycroft murmured, their rivalry forgotten now that some progress was being made. "We could try tracking him to the drop point using surveillance footage from security cameras. But surely...surely...with the three of us--"

"Four of us," Marian corrected.

Mycroft glanced at Alfred. He tried to soften his instinctive expression of contempt, but too late. 

"With the four of us," Sherlock said, giving Alfred a kinder look, "and this envelope, we certainly ought to be able to determine where Magnussen is storing his documents."

Alfred's eyes drifted back to the string of numbers.

"Is that some kind of cataloguing system?" he said, pointing at it.

"Obviously," Mycroft said. "Naturally, however, it is in code. Now the number of functions included in the string indicates that the coding may have been arrived at by an algorythm--"

"But," Alfred said.

Mycroft turned on him, furious about being interrupted. Sherlock looked at him too, almost equally annoyed. 

"Yes, dear?" said Marian. 

"But it's the letters of the alphabet," Alfred said. "Isn't it?"

In the moment of stunned silence that followed, Alfred pointed to the pencilled numbers.

"K 13.5/8.15.7.13.5.19x3b," he said. "I don't know what the K means. But even I know there's twenty-six letters in the alphabet. 13, that's an M. 5 is E. So it's M.E./H.O.L.M.E.S.xcb. M. E. Holmes, xcb. Haven't the foggiest on the xcb, but M. E. Holmes--I mean--well that's you, isn't it, Mycroft?"

They were all just  _staring_ at him like that. Marian with pride and joy; the boys with bewilderment and anger.

"How," Sherlock murmured. " _How_ could it possibly be that simple?"

Marian turned to him rather severely. "Because Charles Augustus Magnussen is not a genius, Sherlock," she said. "He's not even clever. He is an ordinarily gifted man, except for his exceptional greed and exceptional ruthlessness. I  _told_ you we needed Alfred's help. Now, at least, I hope you believe me."

"Have I helped, my dear?" Alfred said, hopefully.

"Immeasurably, love," Marian replied. "Our children, God love them, have a dreadful habit of assuming that everyone likes things to be as complicated as possible, just because _they_ do. You cannot build a cataloguing system on a code that requires you to do calculus equations for every new entry. This system is simple enough to be practical but cryptic enough to frustrate anyone who might happen to see it by chance."

"XCB," Mycroft repeated softly to himself. "Could it be a file extension? No, no, no. Think, Mycroft."

"No," Sherlock burst out, his body alive with sudden inspiration. "No. The number following the X doesn't convert to a letter. It's--its--"

He looked down at the table, putting his hands to his temples and muttering under his breath for a moment. Then he swatted Mycroft on the shoulder and pointed at the pencil scrawl.

"The '3' indicates the number of links in the chain between the person whose materials are actually in the file and the person Magnussen is  _using_ the file to leverage. Now we know what has to have been in this envelope--"

"We do?" Alfred put in.

"We do," Mycroft said, dismissing him with a wave. 

"Harry is John's pressure point, John is my pressure point, I am your pressure point. Mycroft to Sherlock to John to Harry. Three links in the chain."

"Very well," Mycroft said, conceding Sherlock's triumph with his usual lack of grace. "But what do you make of the K? I assume it doesn't stand for Kochel."

"No," Sherlock replied, softly. "But the 'K' does indicate--"

"The 'K' does indicate the title of the  _collection_ ," Mycroft said.

"Well," Alfred said, after the brothers had savored the moment a bit. "We know how to find things in this collection now, if we ever find the collection."

Alfred picked up the envelope. He slid the envelope out of its clear plastic bag and ran his fingers across it.

"No!" Mycroft shouted.

"Don't _touch_ it!" Sherlock cried, at nearly the same moment. "It can't go back to Magnussen's office covered with jam stains!"

"My hands are perfectly clean," said Alfred. "It's nice paper. Smooth and heavy. Not like those brown folders we have in the office, that will give you a paper cut soon as look at you."

"Yes," Mycroft mused, as he stroked it. He picked it up and hefted it in his hand. "And the weight isn't standard either."

Now that they were touching it, of course, Sherlock wanted in. He grabbed the envelope, popped it open, and sniffed at the inside.

"Acid-free paper," he said.

He laid the envelope down on the table. He and Mycroft were looking at each other now as if they knew it all.

"Do let us in on it, will you?" said Alfred, at length.

"This is the kind of paper used to store archival materials," Mycroft said, with unwonted patience. "The kind used by libraries to prevent manuscripts and older paper documents from degrading over time. Now if you'd been to Appledore," Mycroft went on, "you'd know the man cannot stand to have any portion of his body contact any object that is not sleek, minimalist, and ultramodern. His media empire was built on the premise of the disposability of everything. He lives very much in the now, not to say the near future. It is very unlikely that he himself would know or care enough to protect his documents using one of these old and trusted methods of conservation."

"We know he has an elderly confederate," Sherlock continued, "with a set of personality characteristics which are commonly found in curators and librarians."

"Yes, but which library, Sherlock, there are dozens of--"

"Dad," Sherlock said, turning abruptly to Alfred. "Name three major research libraries in the London area."

Alfred quailed a bit at being put on the spot.

"There's the British Library," he began. "And..."

Nothing else came to him.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," he finally said. "I seem to be drawing a blank."

Sherlock turned to Mycroft urgently. "Get me the payroll list for the British Library."

Mycroft had already produced a tablet from somewhere. "One moment, Sherlock, I'm just waiting for the download."

Alfred looked over his shoulder as the names scrolled by.

"It must be someone whose job gives him a great deal of responsibility and discretion," Marian said, moving in to look herself. "He'd need to be able to requisition space, and there can't be anyone checking up on how he spends his time. Someone about our age, judging by the handwriting. Someone on which Magnussen has something--"

"Gilchrist," Alfred said, as the name went by.

"Alfred?" Marian said, encouragingly. Mycroft stopped scrolling.

"Jabez Gilchrist." Alfred waved his hand excitedly at the screen. "He was a year ahead of me at Cambridge. He's--what is he now--head of new acquisitions for the Humanities. Oh that's lovely. I'm so glad. He really loved all that stuff the rest of us just crammed in so as to get by. His Greek was beautiful. It's such a shame what happened."

Sherlock and Mycroft both blinked at him.

"What happened, Dad?" Mycroft said, quietly.

"Well it was never officially confirmed," Alfred said. "But you know, Cambridge, it's a fishbowl. Everyone knew."

"You're doing it on purpose," Sherlock sulked. "Knew WHAT?"

He was doing it on purpose. Well, they could hardly blame him for trying to get a bit of his own back, after all these years of being treated like the village idiot.

"He was up for the Fortescue Prize," Alfred said. "For Greek translation. There was quite a bit of money in it. And then all of a sudden the word went out he wasn't sitting the exam after all; he was off to South Africa instead. Well. It was only forty years ago; but it's an old tradition, you know, if you get in trouble at home then go abroad for a while and when you get home everyone will have forgotten. The story always was that someone had found him with an advance copy of the exam. Cheating, you know. Memorizing ahead of time. Well, I felt for the poor man. He must have been desperate. I'm glad it's all worked out so well for him."

Marian put a hand on his shoulder. There was a moment of silence.

"And you say this was common knowledge," Mycroft said, sadly.

"Well not officially, you know," Alfred answered. "Nobody ever said a word, officially. Of course nobody could ever prove it now. But it was one of those things. Everyone knew, you know; but nobody let him know that they knew. It was all very clubby, Cambridge. One of your own strays and you deal with it in-house. Very different now, of course."

"Not so very different," Marian murmured.

Sherlock seized the tablet.

"Please do not touch my things, Sherlock," Mycroft said, making a grab at it. "I've asked you before."

Sherlock ignored him. His fingers flew across the screen. His face was bathed in flickering bluish-green light as letters and numbers blossomed and died beneath the flat glass screen.

"There," Sherlock said. "The K stands for Krogstad. Private collection funded by an anonymous donor, purchased in 1999. Gilchrist's evaluation of it states that the collection itself is of minimal historical interest but that the enormous bequest  _attached_ to it, which is completely fungible, makes it worthwhile for the library to accept the materials. He volunteers, for the good of the institution, to use off-the-book time to superintend its arrival, catalogue the items, and maintain the materials."

"Maintain them  _where?_ " Mycroft demanded.

Sherlock shook his head. Mycroft snatched at the tablet. They struggled over it briefly, and then Mycroft won. It took him three minutes to toss it back onto the table in frustration.

"That's the only record," Mycroft sighed. "The initial evaluation. Gilchrist must have suppressed all the others." He rubbed his eyes, looking suddenly very tired. Alfred wondered how Mycroft did it all. The man never seemed to sleep.

"Well it's obvious then," Sherlock said. 

"What's obvious?" Alfred answered. "You can't very well search the library, Sherlock, it's enormous."

"Searching is for the police," Sherlock replied. "Tedious, slow, clumsy, and above all messy. When you want to find a thing, you make the person who's hiding it show you where it is."

"I'll handle it," Mycroft said suddenly.

"I have a foolproof--" Sherlock began.

"Yes, Sherlock, I know all about your foolproof method," Mycroft snapped. "I also know how well things worked out the last time you used it. If it costs me my life or my sanity, Sherlock, as long as both of us live there will be  _no_ repetition of the Adler affair, not in any single one of its particulars. I will obtain the information using my own methods.  _You_ can focus on getting this envelope back to Jeanine so that she can replace it before the sun comes up."

"Just--but--one thing," Alfred said, as Sherlock slipped the envelope back into its plastic jacket. "If M.E. Holmes 3b is Harry Watson...who's M.E. Holmes 3a?"

Sherlock and Mycroft looked at him with pity.

"Obviously," said Sherlock slowly, "3b is John's secondary pressure point, and 3a is his primary."

"Ah," said Alfred, with a sigh. "Must be that young woman he's married to."

"Why do you say that?" Marian said, looking at him with love.

"She doesn't love him," Alfred answered, taking her hand. "I am a bear of very little brain. But I know the real thing when I see it."

Alfred darted a glance at Sherlock. Sherlock looked away.

Marian leaned over and kissed the top of Alfred's head.

"There you are, boys," she said. "That's why I married him."

END CHAPTER 12

 


	13. TRUST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place thirteen hours earlier than the previous chapter.

**THIRTEEN HOURS EARLIER**

"Janine," murmured the intercom. "Come here."

Janine pushed back the leather chair and got up, taking her time and smoothing out the burgundy fabric of her dress over her hips before walking toward the door. Magnussen had a camera trained on her workspace, of course, and Janine took care to make the most of every one of her movements. 

Since the Incident, Magnussen had called her into his upstairs office more and more often on slighter and slighter pretexts. He knew she didn't like it. She didn't too much like her own office--being shot of course was dreadful, but being pistol-whipped was no picnic--but when she came to the upstairs office to wait opposite his desk for instructions, she had to stand on carpet that had not so very long ago been soaked in Sherlock's blood. It had been cleaned--Magnussen knew an excellent cleaning service, he sweated and pissed and drooled all over the rest of the world but he liked his own things to be spotless--but Janine couldn't rid herself of the impression that she could still smell it. The blood, the fear, the powder burning.

Magnussen was behind the desk. He was extracting a single sheet of white paper from a large light-brown envelope. Janine was immediately interested in the envelope. It was made of heavier paper, and there was something scrawled in pencil in one corner. Magnussen laid that envelope down on the desk, then picked up a brown paper envelope with the word "Athanson" written on it. He slid the paper into the new envelope, then licked the adhesive on the flap. Slowly, deliberately, and with his eyes always on Janine's face. He knew that it was a daily struggle for her to repress the disgust he inspired in her. He liked to make it harder, any way he could.

"Take this," he said, handing it to her with the still-damp closure first, "over to Athanson's office for me. Give it to him directly, please, not to his secretary."

Janine took it, trying not to touch Magnussen's saliva. "You don't want to use the courier?"

"No," he said, picking up a letter opener. "I prefer that you handle all documents relating to the Watson matter yourself."

"Oh," Janine said, with a smile. "Of course. Certainly, I'll take it over right away. Is there anything you want me to tell him?"

Magnussen contemplated her smile for a moment.

"For what I'm paying him," Magnussen said, "he should certainly know what to do with it. Be very careful with this," he said, reaching a hand across the desk and tapping the ordinary envelope with one finger. "This is a single leaf of pure gold, right here. I can't thank you enough for plucking it for me."

Janine smiled. She had guessed what the document was, but it was nice of him to confirm it for her. "It was my pleasure, Mr. Magnussen."

She mentally noted the position of the large light brown envelope on Magnussen's desk, then turned to go.

"Janine."

Oh God.

Janine turned. "Mr. Magnussen?" she said.

"Come here."

Christ almighty.

Janine walked back toward the desk and planted her platform pumps on the customary spot.

"No, no," Magnussen said. "Not today, I think. Here, behind the desk."

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. 

Janine walked slowly around the desk, stopping behind it, facing him as he turned around in his chair. She clasped the plain brown envelope before her in both hands, waiting, continuing to smile.

He studied her for a moment, considering different options.

"Kiss me," he finally said.

Janine's smile never wavered, though her heart began to pound.

"My goodness, Mr. Magnussen," she said. "Are you turning romantic all of a sudden?"

"I've been reviewing the surveillance," Magnussen said, moving one of those clammy hands over his chin. "In preparation for the trial. You make it look like so much fun. I've never cared for it myself," he said, as the light flashed off the lenses of those glasses. "But let me see." Magnussen stood up, stepped forward, and took her chin in one cold wet hand. "One opens one's mouth, yes? And then at some point the tongue goes in. Very mysterious, that operation. Very hard to follow on camera."

If it had not been for the sight of the mysterious pencil-scrawled envelope lying on Magnussen's desk, Janine would, at that moment, have attacked him. Even after all the disgusting little games he had invented to play with her, somehow at this moment the idea of Magnussen's tongue in her mouth seemed more unbearable and more hideous than any kind of torture. She wanted to put her hands around his throat and strangle him. 

But there was the envelope on the desk. All the months of scheming and lying and posing for the cameras, all the apple juice that poor Harry had come to hate the very smell of--it had all been done so that Janine could be in Magnussen's office to see that envelope come in. If she didn't keep his trust now, all their work would be for nothing. And if I kill him now, she thought, he won't ever know how we played him. And no matter how I did it or how long it took, he could not possibly suffer enough.

Her anger made her cold enough to think. In the split second that it took her to lower her eyelids, to look up at him flirtatiously, she thought: this is a test. He's seen me do this with someone I'm not supposed to care about, someone I'm supposed to find revolting. He's wondering if I'm really that good an actress. Well by all that's holy I will be.

"Don't worry about the tongue, Mr. M," Janine said, touching the side of his face with one hand. "It'll take care of itself. It's not so bad. No matter who it is, it can be no worse than a trip to the dentist."

Magnussen let out a soft little laugh.

"Come on then," he said.

Janine parted her lips. She leaned in. He tilted his head and pressed forward.

The touch of his mouth on hers made her stomach turn. But nothing he could see or feel changed. She moved her mouth slowly; but there was no response. He just let his lips hang open. His tongue slid forward but after that never moved. It was like trying to kiss something dead.

Janine drew back. Her eyebrows lowered as she studied him. His body seemed to have become unusually tense. There was something new about the corners of his eyes. His half-smile reappeared instantly. But he was...he looked...sad.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Magnussen?" Janine finally said, quietly.

Magnussen took off his glasses. He pulled a tissue from the dispenser on his desk and began wiping the lenses.

"You can give me some information," Magnussen said, replacing the glasses.

Janine felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck. "Of course, Mr. Magnussen."

"Why do people do this?" he finally said.  

Janine shrugged. "Not everybody does, you know."

"Oh yes I know," said Magnussen. "But here, in Europe, or in the States. Everyone expects it. Why? I don't understand it."

"Well," Janine finally replied, "It takes all kinds of people to make a world, Mr. M."

She smiled more gently. 

"Thank you, Janine," he said, simply. "That will be all."

She stepped back, walking around the desk to the doorway. She heard a file drawer open and close. Good. He'd put the envelope away. She could nick it out of his file drawer later this afternoon when he was at that board meeting. He had no cameras in his own office. She'd go in there looking for something else--the file on the Guardian merger, he wanted that copied for the press conference--and tuck the thing in her portfolio. Out of the office and down the stairs and off to that funny little sandwich shop round the corner where John had started having lunch every day, and she could run into him by chance.

It would be easy, she thought, as she put on her coat. She wasn't worried at all now. She had never realized it before. He tormented her every chance he got, he brought things up to her that made her long to slap him, he seemed to spend all his free time inventing ways to humiliate her before other people without them realizing what was happening. And just because she took it every day, took it and smiled, he had finally made the biggest mistake of his life. He had decided to trust her.

END CHAPTER 13


	14. BEST SERVED COLD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place three days earlier than the previous chapter.

**THREE DAYS EARLIER**

Time was, Magnussen thought, that when you heard the sound of one voice arguing, you knew the person was an untreated schizophrenic who should be given a wide berth. In this brave new wireless world over which he reigned as king, emperor, First Citizen and Pope, it was no longer uncommon to see ordinary sane persons stop in the middle of the sidewalk, one hand pressing the wireless headpiece in one ear, and burst into rage-filled imprecations directed at someone utterly invisible to the passersby. Janine was involved right now in just such a one-sided conversation. The murmur caught his ear as he sat poring over some of the preliminary figures accounting had sent him regarding the Guardian takeover. When it flared into anger, he got up and crept softly along the corridor to the outer office. 

"No. I don't want to talk. I don't want to see you. I don't understand why security even let you in the building."

Janine was half-out of her leather chair, heels digging into the carpet, hands flat on the top of her desk, snapping into the flat-panel screen that stood up from its center. Magnussen admired all the curves created by this posture. She did it on purpose to taunt him, he knew; but that did not stop him from enjoying it.

"Is there a problem, Janine?" Magnussen said mildly.

Janine let out one of those funny noises of annoyance. Her head whipped around to face him. 

"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnussen," she said. "I don't know how it happened. But it's Ms. Watson. She's down at the entrance to the elevator. She's demanding to come up."

Magnussen's eyebrows drifted gently upward. Pathetic as this she-Watson was, one could not say she took things lying down.

Magnussen came around the desk, brushing up against Janine's flank as he leaned over the desk. Harry Watson's face, curiously flattened as they all were by the camera, filled the screen. Her spectacles and the washed-out color of the image camouflaged her eyes; but her hair was even less aesthetically pleasing than usual, and the collar of the shirt under her suit jacket had not been ironed. 

"Ms. Watson," Magnussen purred, pressing the button. "The time when we could have come to terms has passed. You have no business here. Please exit the building or I shall be obliged to have you removed."

"Sir," said Czanik's voice, from off-camera. "She's got a summons."

Magnussen paused. He looked at Janine. He loved it when her eyes had that startled look, like a cat that's just heard a car backfire.

"Send Ms. Watson up, Czanik," he said.

Janine punched the 'off' button. The screen went dark.

"You can't bring her up here," Janine snapped at him. So suddenly furious, so full of passion. The Irish did this sort of thing so much better than the English.

"It's my office," Magnussen said. "And what can I do? I can hardly avoid service now."

Janine took off her earpiece, threw it down onto the desk, and stalked over to one of the curtained windows.

Even from behind, Janine looked so much like a gathering storm that the little  _bing_ of the elevator was entirely anticlimactic. So was the sight of Ms. Harriet Watson, attorney at law, in another boring monochromatic pantsuit, marching in her sensible shoes up to the desk. 

"Good afternoon, Ms. Watson," said Magnussen. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

The she-Watson took a bundle of papers from under one arm and tossed them onto the desk with a slap.

"Guess," she said, dropping her briefcase. 

He smiled. "I'm afraid I haven't the foggiest."

"Don't play games with me, you son of a bitch," she snapped.

Ah, the Watsons, how short their fuses. Not a full minute into the conversation and already hot under the collar. He wondered how much Dutch courage had been required to prepare her for this confrontation. Now that she was up close, he could see the redness in her eyes, and her breath stank of mouthwash.

"If you're really confused about why I'm serving process on you," the she-Watson went on, "why don't you ask Nagini over there? I'm sure _she_ 's clever enough to work it out."

Janine whirled around with daggers in her eyes, the smile suddenly converted to a set of disconcertingly sharp teeth. 

"If I were you I'd find your own lawyer, sweetheart," Harry said, viciously. "Because when I've finished putting a stake through this vampire's heart, I'm bringing a separate action against you."

Magnussen did so love watching Janine walk in high heels, especially when she was angry.

"By the time I'm finished with  _you,"_  Janine spat, as she bore down on the she-Watson like a fully armed man-o-war, _"_ you'll need a lawyer, a priest,  _and_ an undertaker."  

The two women stared at each other, both visibly bristling. A kind of choked-back sob made it halfway out of the she-Watson's throat. Ms. Watson turned away from Janine, swallowing a lump in her throat. She stabbed with one trembling finger down at the bundle of papers.

"Please don't tell me," Magnussen murmured, "that you have gone to all the trouble of taking out a libel action over a few paltry items in some of my more obscure papers."

"I have," said the she-Watson.

"The last person to take a libel action against me," Magnussen said softly, "shot himself in a hotel bathroom two days after it failed. I invite you to reconsider."

The she-Watson rocked a little on her feet, then steadied herself with some difficulty.

Janine backed up a few paces, looking upon her with disgust from a safe distance. Magnussen reached across his desk for a pen. The she-Watson waited, her chest heaving. So highly strung. Just like her brother and his little soldier face.

Just on impulse, he reached his free hand toward her face. But when his middle finger flicked out, it met nothing. The she-Watson had staggered backward, almost losing her balance.

"Don't you touch me," she hissed at him. And then, turning to Janine, "And I wish my hand had withered and fallen off before I ever touched  _you_!"

"It can still be arranged!" Janine shot back.

"Girls, girls," said Magnussen soothingly. "We are engaged in a business transaction. A little decorum, please."

Janine stalked back to the curtains. The she-Watson took a deep breath and tried to get a hold of herself.

"Sign the top sheet to acknowledge service," said the she-Watson.

The she-Watson's voice was low, and curiously rough. He almost regretted having made her into an example instead of a tool. He would have liked to know what that voice sounded like when it was begging for mercy.

Magnussen picked up the pen and signed, very slowly, on the indicated line. He trailed his fingers across the top sheet, then lifted it up and handed it to the she-Watson. When she reached out to take it, he stroked her hand with one finger. He'd seen Hannibal Lecter do that in _Silence of the Lambs._ It made the whole theater squirm. Brilliant film, _Silence of the Lambs_. Best thing ever to come out of the United States of America.

The she-Watson snatched her hand back as if it had touched a hot coal. But she was clutching the signature sheet.

"I do think you're making a big mistake," Magnussen said. "I have very good lawyers."

"I'm sure you do," the she-Watson retorted. "But you know what you don't have, Mr. Magnussen? Proof."

Magnussen smiled. "How do you know?"

Her mouth opened, but then she seemed to decide against it, and the anger came back. 

"I'll see you in court, Mr. Magnussen," she said. She turned to Janine, venomously. "And I'll see  _you_ in hell!"

The she-Watson stalked out of the office. The door closed. He heard the  _ping_ as the elevator opened.

Magnussen chuckled. He walked around to Janine's desk and opened the link to the elevator camera.

"Ha," he said, after a moment. "Come here, Janine, I want to show you something."

Janine, still visibly upset, came over to the monitor.

"Look," he said. 

Janine looked. Alone in the elevator, the she-Watson was furtively lowering from her lips a little silver flask. She screwed the cap back on, tucked the flask into an inside pocket, and drew from her briefcase a miniature bottle of mouthwash. She took a gulp, sloshing it around in her mouth before swallowing it with a grimace.

"Such a performance," Magnussen murmured. "Watson the sober, Watson the brave. And she can't even wait to have her nip until she's out of the building. So pathetic. The little she-Watson, the soldier manque. It's funny, the desperation, isn't it, Janine? Don't you find it funny?"

Janine gave him one of her very whitest smiles. 

"Oh yes," Janine said, putting a hand over her mouth as she began to giggle. "Yes, I do."

END CHAPTER 14


	15. METHOD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place five days earlier than the previous chapter.

**FIVE DAYS EARLIER**

It had to be at night. John was cramming as many patients into his daytime schedule as he could. The harder he worked the less time he had to think. With Mary out of the office and home with Rachel he was doing a lot more of his own paperwork, which provided him with a valuable means of venting some of his unreleased anger. Plus anything you let Sherlock arrange always happened at night. It was as if he saw his own life as a film, and planned everything so as to maximize the possibilities for dramatic lighting.

John glanced around furtively at the street behind him, at the sidewalk on either side. He put his key in the front door of 221b and began the climb up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson would be out. At least she should be. He had asked Sherlock to see to that.

Being attacked, stabbed with a hypodermic needle, and then put in a bonfire was bad. But he couldn't feel the carpet underfoot or his hand trail along the wallpaper without remembering the sight of Mary climbing these stairs ahead of him. Reaching the summit of Mount Everest wouldn't have been as exhausting as walking up to that flat was that night. And all in all, if he had to choose which experience to go through again, he would definitely pick the bonfire. At least after that one he'd been able to go home to bed and curl up with Mary. And when she clung to him as if her life depended on it, and told him she couldn't live if anything ever happened to him, he'd believed her.

At the top of the stairs, he paused. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The smell of the place got into his lungs. Tears briefly stung his eyes. Those days when it was just the two of them were so long ago now. And no matter what happened tonight, or any other night after it, it would never be just the two of them again.

John opened the door to the sitting room.

Sherlock sat in his usual chair. He had elected to receive Magnussen in his pajamas--or rather, an old pair of John's pajamas, which were both too lose and too short for him--and his old dressing gown and slippers. He looked unprepared, a bit bewildered, and even a little scared--all of it, of course, for the benefit of the man sitting in the chair that used to be John's. It did not require much acting talent to start backwards in disgust when he caught sight of Magnussen, in one of those immaculate Italian suits, reclining in his old chair.

You don't have to be Laurence Olivier, Harry had told him at their lunch that week. Use the emotions you really feel, and just make believe they're about something else. You'll overdo it but it will feel real, and that's exactly what you want.

Fine, John thought. Let's start with anger.

John froze on the threshold. He looked at Magnussen for a moment, letting the hatred fill him. Then his head snapped back in Sherlock's direction.

"What the fuck is  _that_ doing here?" he demanded.

"You come at a bit of a crisis, John," said Sherlock. "Mr. Magnussen has a business proposition for us, and before negotiating with him I thought it necessary to consult you."

"You didn't tell me this was about him."

"You wouldn't have come," Sherlock returned. 

"No I bloody wouldn't have!" John shouted.

"Calm yourself, Dr. Watson," Magnussen said, indicating the client chair with a wave of his hand. "Please take a seat, and let us discuss this rationally."

John didn't look at the client chair. He couldn't. He was too angry to move.  

"We had an agreement," John said, pointedly looking at Sherlock and not Magnussen.

"Yes, John, I know, but I'm afraid--"

"Will you please tell that contemptible prick," John said, hammering at all the consonants, "that if he says a word about going back on that agreement, I will shoot him myself, and this time it will stick."

Magnussen shifted his position in the chair. 

"Do please sit down," Magnussen insisted. "I'm rather afraid you might burst an artery. Purely out of regard for your blood pressure, Dr. Watson, let me tell you that the matter Mr. Holmes has mentioned has no bearing on the arrangement to which your friend and I have come, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with your wife."

Somehow, the look Sherlock was giving him suggested to John that now might be a good moment to sit down in the client chair. Well, why not. They might both be drama queens, but Sherlock was the expert on stage management.

"That's better," said Magnussen, as John sat slowly and warily down. "I really think, since that matter is at least temporarily resolved, there is no reason why this conversation should be so unpleasant. The matter is very simple. A piece of legislation is soon to be introduced in Parliament which would significantly restrict my ability to conduct my ordinary business affairs. Naturally I wish it to fail. The chief sponsor of this legislation is Lady Smallwood. Lady Smallwood's husband is unfortunately dead, and no longer any use as leverage."

"No, John," Sherlock barked, as John half-rose from his chair. "Hear him out first. You'll regret it if you don't."

The note of humiliated concern was so convincing John almost believed it himself. He sat down again.

"Luckily for me," Magnussen went on, "information which could jeopardize Lady Smallwood's Parliamentary seat is in the possession of one Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft has revealed it to no one, apart from his junkie detective brother Sherlock. Sherlock categorically refuses to reveal it to me. Or at least he  _was_ refusing until I let him know that  _I_ have information which if made public would cause irreparable harm to someone very dear to  _you_."

"If you lay a finger on Rachel--" 

"This is not about Rachel, John," Sherlock cut in, but John couldn't stop.

"--I won't even shoot you. I'll fucking fillet you. With a pocketknife. While you're still alive. While you scream--"

"Doctor Watson,  _please!_ " 

The shock of hearing Magnussen actually raise his voice made it possible for John to calm down, at least long enough to close his mouth and resume his chair.

"I've already cost you enough, John," Sherlock said, with a look of pain that might not have been entirely faked. "I don't care about Lady Smallwood or Mycroft. All I want is for you not to be hurt any more. But before...before..." Sherlock glanced at Magnussen in apparent fear. "Before I do something that will tear my own family apart, I want to know for certain that it will be worth it to you."

John swung back viciously in Magnussen's direction. "Stop fucking  _savoring_ it and just tell me what you think you have."

Magnussen leaned forward, elbows on his knees, studying John's face. John could just see him getting ready for another game, sizing up exactly what it would be and on what portion of John's humiliated body it would be played.

"Your sister moved her practice to London shortly after your marriage," Magnussen began.

"That's hardly a state secret," John replied.

"No," Magnussen answered. "Yet it's touching, the affection, the desire to be close to you and your new family. And at the same time, so many startup costs, such a financial risk. Did you know she'd hired a secretary?"

"Mary said something to me about it."

"Ah yes. Janine is of course your wife's bosom friend."

"Was," John retorted.

"Janine was grateful to Mary for putting in a good word for her with your sister," Magnussen said. "So was I, of course; but it would have been a tactical error to show it, at the time."

And here was where John was supposed to act surprised and outraged. Well, the outrage he could do.

"What the hell is he talking about, Sherlock?"

"In retrospect, John," Sherlock began, holding up a hand to ward him off, "it seems so strange that I never made the deduction. But in fact Janine's story about the end of her relationship with Magnussen was not entirely true. Or really at all true. In point of fact, John, Janine has been working for Harry more in the capacity of a--"

John leapt out of the chair.

"You incompetent  _bastard!"_ John shouted--at Sherlock, not at Magnussen. "Do you mean to tell me--"

"Yes, Dr. Watson," Magnussen said, rather loudly, for him. "Janine has never, in fact, stopped working for me."

Magnussen seemed put out not to have John's full attention. John couldn't give it to him. Cursing Sherlock out had cracked something open. All he could so was stare at Sherlock and feel each one of the thousand detonations that the anger was setting off in his brain, his heart, every muscle and every nerve in his body. 

"John," Sherlock said, carefully. "Mr. Magnussen's speaking to you."

The complete absence of snark in Sherlock's tone got through to John somehow. In that instant, looking into Sherlock's eyes, he realized that Sherlock was afraid. Not of Magnussen, or even of John's screwing up the scene. He was afraid of John himself.

Swallowing a sudden surge of shame, John resumed his chair for the fifth time in the past five minutes, and turned to Magnussen. 

"So," John said. "You have something on Harry."

"You're unusually quick on the uptake tonight, Dr. Watson," Magnussen said with a smile. "It only took you twice as long as it would have taken a reasonably intelligent seven-year-old to comprehend the situation. I do in fact have evidence that your sister has abused the trust of one of her elderly clients--your friend's mother, as a matter of fact--in order to raid her savings account. Furthermore, the money stolen from Mrs. Holmes's account has been paid to Janine for services rendered, whose morally and legally questionable nature you can imagine. If any of this ever emerges in print, Dr. Watson, it will mean the end of your sister's legal career, the revocation of her license to practice law, and no doubt the final destruction of any chance she ever had of recovering from her alcoholism. And if your friend refuses to tell me what I want to know about Lady Smallwood, I will see to it that all of this is made public, in full color and in an eye-catching variety of print and digital media."

John looked at him. He put his hands on his knees, cocked his head, and looked at Magnussen some more. He tried to look extremely puzzled. Then, gradually, he started laughing.

"The stress," Magnussen said, after about a minute of this, "appears to have rather unhinged your little friend."

"You idiot," John said, with just the biggest smile he could fit on his face. "You utter and total ass. You pathetic, disgusting, slimy little tick. I thought you were supposed to be someone," John went on, feeling almost lightheaded now. "The, what, the Napoleon of blackmailers? Well welcome to Waterloo, mate." _  
_

Sherlock looked at John in alarm. "Don't try to bluff Magnussen, John. It never works."

Magnussen nodded. "Your friend is right. What I just told you is the absolute truth. And--"

"Fine!" John burst out with a laugh, waving his arms wide. "Fantastic!"

He kept on laughing. Sherlock stared at him. Magnussen stared at him.

"What I meant was," John finally said, "that you desperately need to sack whoever it was who led you to believe that I have ever given, or would ever give, a flying fuck about anything that ever happened to Harry Watson."

Magnussen looked to Sherlock, with what John fancied was a slightly alarmed expression. 

"John," Sherlock said. "Think before you speak. I'll abide by your decision, of course, but let me advise--"

"Enough!" John shouted, waving a hand to shut Sherlock up. He stood up and advanced toward Magnussen, stopping just out of arm's reach.

"Everything I will ever have to say to you for the rest of your life, I will now put into four very short words," John said.

Magnussen stood up, hoping to intimidate him.

"Publish and be damned," John said. 

He turned and stalked out of the sitting room.

As he left, he could hear Magnussen's voice murmuring. And over that, Sherlock's curt dismissal: "You were evidently mistaken, Mr. Magnussen. Harry is quite obviously not one of John's pressure points. I decline to negotiate. Get out."

John clattered down the stairs into the street. He stood by the railings, breathing hard. It was over. The scene was done. He had no need for this anger. But it would not go back. He wanted to smash the iron railings. He wanted to beat the paving-stones into dust. He wanted to throttle the bastard who was just now emerging from the front door, looking about him carefully, walking toward a sleek black car that had been pulled up by the kerb.

As the door was opened for him by someone inside, Magnussen turned to the darkened spot where he could, evidently, smell John lurking. He let go of the car door, and walked back toward him.

"You are a terrible liar, Dr. Watson," Magnussen breathed. "And neither of you fooled me for a moment. I will publish. And you will be damned. And perhaps after that, we can deal."

John spat in his face.

Magnussen smiled. He produced a handkerchief, wiped off the offending spittle, then pressed the damp patch of cotton to his lips.

"Despite the restrictions imposed by the agreement," Magnussen said, "I have always enjoyed owning you. And I think I always will."

Magnussen turned and glided into the car. The door closed. The car passed out of sight.

John turned around and looked up at the windows of 221b. He wanted to go back up. He knew that was what Sherlock wanted. But he couldn't. Even if they could both have been sure there was no one watching, he couldn't have. The anger had come out, and now he couldn't get it back into the box.

He could see Sherlock's head, silhouetted in the window. The light was behind him. John couldn't read the expression on his face.

Sherlock's hand drew the curtain across the window.

John looked down at the street. He thrust his hands in his pockets. He started up the street, looking for a cab.

Where does it go, John thought, waving from the corner at the stream of headlights. Where do other people put their anger? When it's too big for the box, when it's burning so you can't put it out, when it's hot enough to scar anything you get close enough to touch, how do you get rid of it? What do other people do?

He climbed into the cab and pulled the door shut. His text alert went off.

He pulled out his mobile. It was from Sherlock.

It said, "SH. 23. SH."

The first SH stood for 'safe house.' 23 meant 11:00pm; the absence of a second number meant 11pm tonight. The second SH stood for "Sherlock Holmes."

John almost put the thing back in his pocket. But he let it sit on his lap.

The text repeated. SH. 23. SH. SH. 23. SH. SH. 23. SH. Maybe a command; maybe a plea. Also, almost, a kind of lullaby.

John texted back.

SH. 23. JW.

END CHAPTER 15


	16. REAR WINDOW ETHICS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place nine days earlier than the previous chapter.

**NINE DAYS EARLIER**

Janine watched Harry stand there at the front door, her brows slowly moving into an expression of bewilderment. Slowly, Harry put her hand in one pocket of her trousers, turned it out, and found nothing. Just as slowly, she investigated the other. Janine waited impatiently, half in and half out of the light, watching Harry draw a bunch of keys out of that pocket, staring at them closely as if there was some very important ancient text incised on them.

Behind them, cars sped by along the street. They'd be visible to any of them; but they wouldn't look. This was all for the benefit of the stooge Magnussen had positioned in the little apartment above the Tesco opposite Harry's place. Harry was now carefully selecting one of the fifty keys she had on that ring, and trying to get it into the lock. God it was taking her forever. Before she got sober, Harry must have been a very frustrating date.

"God damn it," Harry's voice broke out, roughly and too loudly. "Here, Janine, you do it."

Harry thrust the keys at Janine. 

"Oh for goodness' sake, Harry," Janine said, with an exasperated sigh. "I'm to do everything for you tonight, am I?"

Harry looked up at her with a leer that was really quite startlingly accurate.

"You promise?" Harry said.

Harry reached out to pull Janine into the half-shadow under the door. Harry stumbled backward, bracing herself against the door, and Janine half-tripped into her arms.Harry ran the fingers of one hand through Janine's hair, brushing it back from her face. Quite suddenly, and with a swiftness and confidence that were not entirely in character, Harry slipped her hand around the back of Janine's neck and leaned into the kiss.

Of course it made sense for Harry always to take the initiative. Once again, Janine found it difficult to stick to the script. She loved the feel of Harry's short hair when she ruffled it. She loved the strangeness of it all, Harry's lips soft but strong, the way Harry's tongue shuddered and rasped when it touched her own. She loved the fireflies. That was how she thought of them, the little tingling flashes that the touch of Harry's mouth sent along her nerves, lighting up trails to all the other places that Harry, God damn her, wouldn't touch.

Harry tried drawing back. Janine pressed forward. One minute later, Harry put her mouth against Janine's ear and murmured, "I think they've got enough for the establishing shot."

Janine drew back. She looked into Harry's face and laughed, softly.

"Come on then, you big gaum," Janine said.

Janine marched to the keyhole and opened the door. Harry took the keys from her and motioned for her to go up first. Janine was never sure whether this was the gentlemanly thing to do, or whether Harry just liked her rear view on the staircase. Could be both. Most likely both.

At the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall with her eyes half-closed, winded, Harry waved a hand at Janine. Janine sighed, took the other key, and opened the door to Harry's flat. She put Harry's arm over her shoulders and helped her in, closing the door behind them.

Harry took a few unsteady steps into the living room and flopped down on the couch. Janine crouched over her, one knee on either side of Harry's supine body. Harry's eyes opened, slightly puzzled.

"Curtains opposite," Janine murmured. She leaned back, shook out her long dark hair, glanced through the open window at the fire escape opposite, and bent half-way down toward Harry. Then, as if something had suddenly occurred to her, Janine got up, slowly and gracefully. Harry sat up and watched her cross the room. Janine reached up, favoring the darkness with a smile of anticipation and triumph, and pulled the curtains closed.

"Show's over for tonight," Janine murmured, in her best Grace Kelly.

Harry sat up abruptly. She nearly bounced off the sofa, stalking into the kitchenette and opening the fridge. 

"Oh Christ," Harry said, staring into its bleak white interior with disappointment. "All I've got in here is apple juice."

Janine broke into a laugh. She opened up her white leather hobo purse and began pulling things out of it. Crisps, a bag of microwave popcorn, and two miniature bottles of Perrier, along with a DVD in its slim plastic cover.

"Oh, you're good," Harry said.

"I'm the best," Janine answered, sashaying over to the television and the DVD player. She looked at the narrow oblong of plastic in her hand. "We're doing this all very old school, aren't we now?"

Harry shrugged. "Since Mycroft set up the surviellance block in here you can't get a good internet connection. Little discs of plastic were good enough for our forefathers and by God they'll be good enough for us."

"And you're sure it works?"

"I'm sure. I told them, look, if I have to keep the act up at home I'll crack up long before payday. Sherlock argued but Mycroft didn't. Mycroft organizes this undercover shit all the time, apparently. He's got a more realistic idea of how much an ordinary human being can take."

"And you trust Mycroft?" Janine said.

Harry considered. 

"Let me say this," Harry said. "I trust his love for his brother and his desire to tear Magnussen to pieces. Farther than that, I don't know. But that's far enough at the moment."

"Far enough," Janine echoed. She bent over carefully and inserted the DVD.

"You know you don't have to do that," Harry said.

Janine turned around. Harry was sitting on the couch, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. She'd kicked off her shoes and her feet were still in their black matte stockings. She was giving Janine a rather hard stare.

"What if I like doing it?" Janine retorted.

Harry looked away.

Janine put the popcorn in the microwave. While it began exciting itself, she sidled onto the couch next to Harry. Harry was silent.

"What's the matter with you tonight, Har?" Janine said, slipping a hand around Harry's arm.

Harry let the hand rest, though it didn't seem to relax her.

"I saw it in the Guardian today," Harry said. "I read it every morning, you know, or I will for as long as it's not Magnussen's."

"Saw what?" Janine said.

"Lady Smallwood's just announced the Media Regulation Initiative," Harry said.

Janine felt a small tremor in the pit of her stomach.

"It's all in place now," Harry went on, a bit mournfully. "Magnussen's got the bank form, he's had time to file it at the remote location. We're certainly giving him plenty of circumstantial evidence. He'll spend a couple days trying to leverage her, and when he finds he can't, he'll try leveraging Sherlock, which means leveraging John, which means that it will probably be a matter of days before Magnussen gives you notice to quit. He'll want you safely back in his office by the time the bomb drops."

Janine stared at the opening menu of the DVD, which had been sitting there playing its little tune all along. Blinds going up, blinds going down.

"How do you want to do it?" Harry said. "The quitting, I mean. Do you want to run away under cover of darkness or have a telenovela-style--"

"I don't," Janine burst out.

Harry heard the strain in her voice. "Janine?"

"I don't!" Janine said, rising on her knees on the cushion and turning to face Harry. "I don't want to quit. I don't want it to be over. I don't want to go back there."

"Oh sweetheart," Harry said, touching her gently on the shoulder.

It was one of the terms of endearment Harry had started using around the office after their first lunch date. She'd never used it in private before. Harry's face registered this with more than a little anxiety; but she didn't take it back. She did lift up her hand.

"It won't be for long," Harry said. "Once we trace the bank form back to the remote site the boys will destroy whatever he has on you. You'll never have to work for Magnussen again."

Janine knew that. But. She was looking at Harry's face. The thought of not seeing it again, of never being able to touch it or stroke it or feel Harry looking at her out of those wounded eyes, was unbearable. Janine grabbed the back of Harry's head with both hands, her body pressing forward as her lips opened.

For an instant, Harry was right there with her. And then her body was suddenly hard, and her head jerked back, and Janine shrank back to the other end of the couch.

"Why not, Harry?" Janine said, now with tears of anger. "Just because nobody's watching?"

Harry sprang off the couch, muttering something profane. She had made almost a full circuit of the room before Janine called out, "What's the matter? Don't you like me?"

Harry stopped. She thrust her hands into her pockets. Somehow this attitude made her seem younger, like a child trying to face down a particularly unfortunate bit of mischief.

"Janine," Harry said, curtly. "Why would I not like you?"

"I don't know!" Janine fired back. "Because you think I'm stupid, maybe."

There was a brief silence while Harry's face took on a much more authentic expression of bewilderment than the one she had put on outside the door.

"Christ almighty, Janine," Harry said. "Who on God's earth would ever think you're stupid?"

Magnussen for starters, Janine thought. And her father. And her mother. And...she went on for a few moments listing in her head all the people who had called her an idiot, called her a slut, told her her brains were in her tits and arse. Then she took a hold of herself.

"Apart from any of...this farce," Harry said, waving her arms to indicate the world around them, "you are a really good legal secretary. Your research skills are exceptional. I mean if you worked for me--you know--for real, I'd have already talked to you about going back for your uni degree. You don't have the  _credentials_ for law school right now and that's not your fault, but you certainly have the intelligence. I have been beaten in court by lawyers that were not as intelligent as you are. Of course I was drunk at the time, but you know, you take my point."

Janine studied her. 

"After the trial," Janine said, "I'll surely be out of a job. I could, you know--"

Harry let out an explosive little breath. "Oh Jesus, Janine, no. You can't come to work for me after all this. It would be totally--I--no. I'll write you an excellent reference, though."

Janine cracked just the tiniest bit of a smile.

"So," she finally said. "You do like me."

"Yes."

Janine got up and began moving toward her. Harry stayed where she was, watching her approach with mingled apprehension and anticipation. And then, when Janine was maybe two paces away, Harry closed her eyes and called out, "Stop."

Irritated as she was, there was something about the way Harry was holding her body that made Janine stop.

"If I touch you right now," Harry said, "while everything is still going on. If you touch me. Neither of us will really know why we're doing it. Neither of us will be sure where the game ends and the real thing begins."

"What's the matter with the game, Harry?" Janine said, sadly. "Why shouldn't we have some of our own fun?"

After a few more moments of awkward silence, Janine said, "I do like kissing you, Harry. For real."

"Well that's not all there is to it," Harry replied.

"Oh," Janine said. "Now you're pulling rank on me."

Harry shook her head. She looked down at the carpet, then up, raking her short hair with one hand.

"I need to know," Harry said, slowly, with both hands pressing the air before her as if trying to push the words into Janine's head, "that you are free. I can enjoy the game as long as it's about what we're doing to  _that_ bastard. If it's about you and me--then--you have to be free. And you can't be. Not until after the trial."

Janine took a sharp glance at Harry. 

"After the trial, you say."

Harry nodded. 

"Harry Watson," Janine said. "Is that a date?"

Harry scratched the short hair at the back of her head with one hand.

"I guess so."

The fifteen year old girl that still lived inside Janine jumped in the air and clapped her hands with a squeal. The adult Janine who was actually there in the room with Harry said, "Lunch or dinner?"

Harry gave a tiny little sheepish grin that made everything inside Janine tingle.

"We'll start with lunch," Harry said. "We'll see how it goes."

The microwave beeped.

Harry made a sudden swerve toward the kitchen. Janine walked quickly toward the couch. She tucked herself back into her accustomed corner. Harry came by and took up the other cushion. Janine finally pressed play.

They munched their popcorn side by side for a few minutes. 

"Mary used to come over for movie night sometimes," Janine observed. "Girls' night, she called it. Said the two of them needed the occasional night to themselves, and so did she."

Harry's body tensed, as it always did at the mention of Mary's name.

"You are the only person I've ever known," Janine finally said, "that has always tried to be honest with me."

Harry snorted.

"This?" she said, waving an arm at the curtained window behind them. "You call this honest?"

"I do," Janine replied.

Janine couldn't stop herself from leaning over just a bit and putting her dark head on Harry's shoulder.

"Grace Kelly," Janine sighed. "I really think she was the most beautiful actress in the whole world."

Harry watched her in silence for a few seconds.

"Next but one, maybe," Harry said. 

END CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 


	17. MTV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place two weeks earlier than the previous chapter.

**TWO WEEKS EARLIER**

The surveillance feed from the London office of Harriet Watson & Associates was rapidly becoming one of Magnussen's favorite private channels. Most evenings now he spent sipping his rare and very expensive whiskey while browsing the day's images. Even on days which were of no particular consequence from a leverage point of view, the banter was always entertaining and he was always captivated by Janine's performance. Such snappy comebacks, such smoldering looks, such provocative poses, and now and then a smile that looked somehow brighter and sunnier than it ever had in his office. It was like _His Girl Friday,_ but sexier. All this time she'd been working for him he had never fully appreciated her talents. He would rectify that when she resumed her regular duties. With proper training he might be able to make something of her.

"How in the world are you affording me, Harry?"

This particular afternoon was one of Magnussen's favorites. The she-Watson standing by Janine's desk, toying rather possessively with a long curly lock of Janine's magnificent hair; and Janine looking up bold as brass and acknowledging that she was a whore. And Harry just smiled, and said, "That's the great thing about doing wills and estates, Janine. A lot of your clients are elderly, and they're not always on top of things."

The she-Watson disappeared into the inner office. Magnussen could have switched to that feed; but he knew what was coming next. Someday he would take all of this and edit it down into a short film. Maybe he would show it at private parties.

Mrs. Marian Holmes burst through the door like some rampaging Greek goddess. "Young lady," she said, while the folds of her drapery were still settling. "I wish to speak with Ms. Watson. Where is she?"

"I'm afraid she's in a meeting at the moment," which is what the she-Watson had taught Janine to say whenever she was in the office with the door closed. 

"That is a patent falsehood," said Mrs. Holmes. "Bring her out here immediately or I shall go in and fetch her myself."

The she-Watson emerged from the inner sanctum. "Mrs. Holmes? What can I do for you?"

Mrs. Holmes withdrew from her purse a white sheet of paper and waved it in the air.

"You can explain this!"

And here was where the editing would be important. If you stayed on the feed from the waiting room, all you saw was Mrs. Holmes berating the she-Watson. Breach of trust, unethical conduct, so many ways the British had of saying the word 'steal.' Mrs. Holmes and the she-Watson then spent a few minutes scrutinizing the signature on what was apparently a bank form requesting a cashier's cheque from Mrs. Holmes's savings account.

"You're the only one besides Alfred who has access to my account numbers. And let me tell you--"

Mrs. Holmes slammed the document down on Janine's desk. And this was where you felt the loss of a movable camera that could do a proper tracking shot. Because while Mrs. Holmes and the she-Watson went after each other, neither of them saw Janine surreptitiously lift the bank form off her desk and disappear to the corner by the copier; nor did they see Janine return to her desk and put the copy down in the spot where Mrs. Holmes had laid the original. The original document, with the original signature, Janine secreted in her top desk drawer. You could see Janine doing all that from this angle but only if you knew what to look for. A proper film would have used a close-up there. Ah well.

"You have not heard the last of this," said Mrs. Holmes, snatching up the photocopy from the desk and thrusting it back into her purse. "But you have seen the last of my money. Your services are terminated. I demand that you return to me all copies you have of any paperwork relating to my end-of-life planning."

Cowed and near tears, the she-Watson slunk off to her office to collect the necessary documents. This was one of the parts you'd have to edit out. There was a lot of damned paperwork. The film would cut directly from there to the moment when Mrs. Holmes sailed out of the office, head held high, weighed down by an enormous cardboard box full of documents. And then the moment of doom-laden silence that followed, as Harry and Janine tried not to look at each other.

"What were you saying, Harry," said Janine, "about your elderly clients not being too on top of things?"

The she-Watson turned away with a curse. She stomped into her office and slammed the door.

And then the best part. Janine turned toward the camera--she had some instinct for knowing where they were--and pulled out the bank form. Janine lifted it high, with a broad and bright smile. Then she tucked it into an envelope and licked the flap, slowly, tauntingly, her eyes always on the camera.

Magnussen had found it hard to part with the bank form, just because of that. Even now, he kept the original envelope in which it had arrived, the one that Janine had licked with such insinuating and intimate relish. He liked to keep it in his lap and stroke it while he replayed the scene. He loved the directness of her gaze, the certainty that she was doing this all for him. She was coming along so well. Yes, he would begin developing her, once she returned to his own office. With proper cultivation, she could become another Mary Morstan.

END CHAPTER 17


	18. OPENING BID

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place thirteen days earlier than the previous chapter.

**THIRTEEN DAYS EARLIER**

Starting a new job was nerve-wracking enough under ordinary circumstances. Learning a new boss's personality, figuring out when they meant what they said and when they didn't, learning to do all those little things to please them that they didn't want to have to ask for or tell you about. And that was all over and above your actual duties, which at this job were considerable. "I've never had a secretary," Harry said on Janine's first day on the job. "I'm used to doing everything myself. It'll take me a while to figure out how to delegate." But in fact it hadn't. Harry Watson was evidently a master at delegating, judging by the way the volume of actual work had ballooned over the course of the first week.

 _Pick up the pace,_ said Magnussen, after the first three days.  _I'm not paying you to file._

The man had no patience. After three days he could hardly expect Harry to let her in on whatever shenanigans went on behind that closed office door. Janine had always assumed she was drinking back there, but she'd been unable to find any confirming evidence of it apart from a couple empty bottles and a strong odor of mouthwash.

 _It will have to be sex_ ,said Magnussen, at the beginning of the second week.  _We can't count on anything else. You will be compensated accordingly._

So, with only a bit of shuddering, Janine initiated the protocol. That was how she always put it to herself. It made her feel more like a spy in an action movie. It made her feel cool, and hard, and invulnerable. It made her feel like she was in charge. 

But of course the protocol had always been used with men. Janine wasn't sure it was working on Harry. She'd catch Harry looking at her--she was interested and all--but it didn't feel right. When Harry's eyes rested on her she felt seen through, rather than looked at. Looking back at Harry was also strange. The short hair and the mannish suits didn't help as much as Janine had hoped they would. She'd find herself staring at Harry's chest, thinking,  _I suppose I will have to do something with that,_ and feeling a chill in her stomach. 

Magnussen acted as if it didn't matter. As if any job should be just like another--man or woman, old or young, hot or hideous. _It's all the same honey,_ he'd say.  _And a trap is a trap._

Hearing Magnussen's reptilian voice in her head propelled Janine to action. It reminded her that the consequences of failure were too horrible to contemplate. 

Taking up the first piece of completed work she could find, Janine knocked gently on the door of Harry's inner office.

"Harry?" she said. "Can I come in?"

"One moment."

Janine heard the sound of a drawer being hastily pushed closed.

"Come in."

Janine advanced slowly toward Harry's desk. She placed the pile of letters on it, looking up at Harry from beneath her long lashes and smiling shyly.

"Here are those notice letters you asked for."

"Thanks," Harry said, reaching to pick them up.

Janine laid her hand on top of Harry's. Harry's hand froze. Janine stroked the back of Harry's hand, slowly, as she withdrew her own. Janine put her hands on the edge of Harry's desk and leaned over it, almost nose to nose with her.

"You're welcome," she breathed.

The protocol didn't seem to be working. Harry was hard to read; but Janine thought the look in her eyes at this moment was really more fear than arousal.

"Let me know what else I can do for you," Janine said, walking out slowly, with a backward glance.

Back at her desk, Janine tried to stop her stomach from churning. She had done it wrong. It wasn't going to work. She'd made the move too soon, or too late, or too obviously, or something, and Harry had picked up a warning somehow. It wasn't going to work. She was going to fail. And Magnussen would hate her for it. Janine had always known, despite everything, that there were a few things Magnussen was capable of that he had elected not to do to her. It made it possible for Janine to get through the work day, and to have something left to enjoy life afterward. But that was because she'd never failed him. She'd never made him angry. Letting Sherlock into that office had changed everything. This was the only chance she had to work her way out from under that. It was her only chance to persuade him not to destroy her. And she was failing at it. She was failing.

Janine was bent over her desk sniffing into a tissue when she heard Harry's door open.

"Janine," said Harry. "I'm going to lunch."

Janine looked up. An instant later she remembered there were still tear tracks on her face. 

Harry looked at her impassively for a moment. 

"Would you like to come?" Harry said.

Oh my God, it was working after all.

"Sure," Janine said, with a smile that was perfectly genuine. "Where are we going?"

"A place I know in Belgravia," Harry said. 

"Ooh," Janine cooed. "Very swank."

Harry shrugged. She took Janine's coat off its peg, and held it out for her.

Janine slipped the coat on. Harry opened the office door, and they went down to the street. 

In the cab, Janine began to worry. Harry seemed to have very little interest in speaking to her. She was absorbed in an intense interaction with her mobile phone, which seemed to be vexing her more and more as the ride went on. Finally Harry told the driver to stop. Janine got out while Harry paid.

"Are you sure this is the place?" Janine said, a bit nervously. They were in a quiet square that as far as Janine could see held nothing but houses. 

"I'm sure," Harry said. "This place is more of a club than a restaurant. They don't advertise. You just have to know where it is."

Harry marched up to one of the identical white doors. She put a key in the lock. The door swung open, revealing a long and dim entrance hall.

"Come on," Harry said, beckoning her.

Well. Obviously this was more than lunch. It was just what Janine wanted, of course. Only she felt cold, and anxious, and her guts seemed to be turning to water.

With a confidence that belied all of that, Janine strode forward. Harry walked in behind her. The door slammed.

"It's empty," Janine said.

"This floor is," Harry said. The bare walls and floor gave her voice an eerie echo. "We're going to the basement."

Every cell in Janine's body sounded the alarm.

"No," she said. Whisper echoes chased each other down the corridor.

Harry backed up, leaning against the opposite wall.

"Fine," Harry said. "No reason we can't do it here, really."

Janine stared at her. The hallway was entirely bare. No furniture, not even any paper on the walls. It didn't look as if anyone had lived in it in months. It was the last place you would choose for an assignation.

"Listen, Janine," Harry said. "I know you're still working for Magnussen."

Janine's body went rigid with fear.

"Oh God," Janine whispered. "Please don't kill me."

Harry lost her poker face. She didn't laugh exactly. But she was on the verge.

"Now there's something I don't hear every day," Harry said.

"I swear to you, Harry, I've done nothing--"

"No," Harry cut in. "Not yet you haven't. But this morning, all this unnecessary touching and let me know what I can do for you, that was your opening bid, wasn't it?"

Janine was aware that this was bad, and that she should be very concerned about what would happen next. But she somehow couldn't feel the fear any more. Harry's words were sharp enough but the voice was kinder than Janine had ever known it to be.

"Yes," Janine admitted. 

 _What are you doing, Janine?_  said Magnussen's voice in her head.  _You're scuttling the ship when you should be trying to save it._

"If it were just the spying," Harry said, "that would be all right. I told the boys I have no problem enabling that.That was always part of the plan--for you to give Magnussen what he wants. Nobody wants to see you hurt."

Janine began, slowly, trying to understand how Harry's words fit together, and what this brand new puzzle was going to look like when it was finished.

"Whose plan?" Janine retorted.

"Well, Sherlock worked out most of the details," Harry said. 

Janine took in a hissing breath. "I am so fucking done with Sherlock and his  _plans._ "

She began walking toward the door. 

"Listen to me," Harry called. "We're going to take Magnussen out. Once and for all, forever."

"Oh, like he did the last time," Janine said, bitterly.

But she turned around. Harry stood in the hallway, facing her, arms folded over her chest.

"The boys are very against my bringing you in on it," Harry said. "You know Sherlock, he doesn't like for anyone else to have access to the complete script. That's because he doesn't want anyone else editing it. The way I am, for instance, by doing this now."

"You mean they were just going to play me," Janine said, angrily. "Again."

Harry nodded.

"And so were you."

"Until today," Harry admitted. 

" _Why?_ "

It came out like a scream. Janine realized she wasn't just talking to Harry. She was screaming that  _why_ at Sherlock, at Magnussen, at her father, at everyone over the years who had looked at her and seen someone eager for approval, eager for importance, easy to manipulate.

"Because I can't--" Harry threw her hands up. "If what Magnussen wants is for you to have sex with me, and trap me that way--well I just can't. I can't do it to myself and I can't do it to you either. I couldn't do it to anyone."

Janine's massive sense of relief was cut with a new blast of fear.

"But if I don't--if I don't--" Janine kept trying to finish the sentence, but she couldn't seem to get enough air. Harry darted forward. She put her hands on Janine's shoulders. Gradually, Janine's breathing slowed.

"You don't have to," Harry said. "There's another way to play this. But for that way to work, you need to be in on it. We need to cooperate."

"Cooperate how?" Janine said. 

"We make him  _think_ we're having sex," Harry said. "We make him  _think_ I'm paying you. We make him  _think_ I'm stealing from my clients to pay you. And at the same time, we make sure that none of it's actually true."

Harry didn't say anything more. But Janine thought she could see the whole plan unrolling before her.

"How can you trust me?" Janine said.

Harry almost smiled. 

"Look, Janine," she said. "You're a gorgeous, intelligent, fun-loving woman who is privy to the innermost secrets of the most revolting man on the planet. I'm not an expert on these things but I think it's pretty likely that you didn't get into that relationship of your own free will and that you're not staying in it voluntarily. You want out. Of course you want out. And I can get you out."

Janine blinked at Harry through her tears.

"You don't know what he has on me," Janine said, brokenly.

"I know it must be pretty awful," Harry said. "But I also know it's not something in which you had a choice."

Janine's face contorted in a sob. "How can you?"

Harry considered a moment.

"Well I've had some opportunities lately to observe a real psychopath," Harry said. "I'm pretty sure that's not what you are."

Janine looked at Harry's face. All the mad things that had happened that day seemed to be prompting her to become even madder.

"My father's a priest," Janine said.

Harry nodded. "All right, Janine."

"My mother was fifteen." Janine wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. "He's an old man now. He's very sick. If they rake it all up now--"

"Oh Janine," Harry said. "You don't have to tell me. You really don't--"

"She tells people I'm her sister!"

"Jesus."

Harry took a step forward and put her arms around Janine. Janine let herself fall into the hug. She rested her head on Harry's shoulder and cried. It had been years, she thought, since she had cried like that. There was no one in her life she could tell. Her mother said she still loved her father. She didn't get it at all. Janine was fairly sure she was not his only child. She was fairly sure that her mother was not the only woman he had told all those lies to.

Janine kept crying until she was empty. When she finally lifted her head and stood back, she thought she could see new lines on Harry's face. Worry lines, maybe. Or lines of sorrow.

"Are you in?" Harry said, quietly.

Janine nodded. She extended her hand, formally, absurdly.

"I'm in," she said.

Harry shook her hand. She looked so happy, so genuinely pleased. Janine's heart gave a tiny little leap.

"All right then," she said. "Come on down to the basement and we'll go over things with the boys."

Janine followed Harry down the hallway.

"So that's what's in the basement," Janine said.

"Yeah," Harry answered. "The whole house is safe, of course; but they like the basement best. It's soundproofed down there."

Janine slipped her hand into the crook of Harry's arm, as if Harry were taking her down to dinner.

"So," Janine said, as the old wickendness revived in her. "Knock first, is what you're saying."

"Oh yes," Harry said, with a brief grimace of chagrin. "Always knock first."

END CHAPTER 18


	19. BIRTHDAY PRESENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place twenty days earlier than the previous chapter.

**TWENTY DAYS EARLIER**

"You're sure about this," Mycroft shouted. The new 'invisible helicopter' that Mycroft's team was working on had a hybrid engine which did make it quieter, but the motion of the blades themselves and the vibration of the frame still nearly drowned out his voice. "Normally one would do a trial first attached to an experienced jumper."

"I'm surprised at you, Mycroft," Sherlock said, zipping up his black jumpsuit and checking the buckles on his harness. "I thought we agreed as children never to use the word  _normal_ in conversation with each other."

"There are easier ways to arrange this meeting," Mycroft shouted back.

"That's what's been holding you back all your life, Mycroft," Sherlock replied. "No appreciation for dramatic effect."

Sherlock looked down. Far below the helicopter, picked out by the light of a full moon and a starry sky, the curving roofs of Appledore spiraled out from the central tower like the unfolding wings of a tiny dragon. Sherlock crouched down, gave Mycroft a manic grin and a thumbs-up, and tipped himself backward over the edge.

For the first half-second, maybe, Sherlock amused himself by imagining Mycroft's reaction. He'd always been terrified of heights. But after that, he just spread out his arms and legs and let the night air rush past him. From above, he could see the whole site, the whole design unfurling gracefully. It was thrilling, plummeting through thin air toward something so beautiful and dangerous. Oh, he shouldn't have waited so long to do something like this. 

He checked his altimeter. Not without regret, he pulled the ripcord.

Magnussen didn't have floodlights. He'd built the place to be far away from noise and bright light and all the rest of the cheap vulgarity with which he had polluted the rest of the world. There were quite advanced security systems guarding all the doors and windows. But when Sherlock's feet touched the roof of the observation tower, and the parachute fluttered down softly around him, nothing beeped or bleated or blared. 

Sherlock shed the harness quickly. The black jumpsuit he kept on; it would serve his purpose. Extracting a long, thin blade from a compartment sewn along one of the legs, he began sawing through the shingles. 

When he had a hole opened, he let himself down into the  crawl space. Insulated, of course; but with green materials--there had been a very glossy feature in one of his tonier magazines about how green Magnussen's house was--which yielded easily to the blade. Another series of cuts, and he dropped easily through the roof into the observation tower.

From there, Sherlock stole softly along the corridor to the penthouse suite. The doors leading into it from the corridor were open. Magnussen was not a great one for hermetic spaces or tight compartments. He liked, Sherlock imagined, to feel that his presence was pervading the entire house, exhaling with each of his sleeping breaths into every curve and sweep of this cornerless palace.

Naturally, though he lived alone, Magnussen had an enormous bed, custom-made in the shape of an oval and bedecked with black satin bedclothes. An odd choice for a man who exuded so much moisture, even during the night, that he must have had to launder his sheets daily. He was also, evidently, a sound sleeper. Sherlock crept along the edge of the oval. Magnussen had positioned himself right in the middle. To do this right, he'd have to get onto the bed with him.

Well, Sherlock told himself. John has put himself through worse for you.

Sherlock sprang. He landed right next to Magnussen. The motion woke him, of course. But by the time Magnussen's eyes had fluttered all the way open, Sherlock had the barrel of John's gun pressed to his temple.

"Good evening, Mr. Magnussen," Sherlock hissed at him, holding Magnussen's head in his vise-like grip. "Your time is of value, and so is mine. I will make this brief."

Magnussen blinked at him. The man was so short-sighted, and the room was so dark, that it was possible Magnussen couldn't see Sherlock's face. Sherlock's eyes, always sensitive even in the dark, could on hte other hand certainly perceive an abject terror, denoted by an increase in perspiration, which suggested that Magnussen had at least recognized Sherlock's voice.

"If I pull this trigger right now," Sherlock murmured, "no jury in England will convict me for it. You've established that yourself."

"Then pull it," Magnussen whispered. "What have you to be afraid of?"

So many times and ways Sherlock had imagined confronting Magnussen; and it was never how you thought it would be. Sherlock had come in expecting to enjoy this. But here amongst the sweat-stained sheets, with Magnussen's round and terrified eyes blinking at a world they couldn't bring into focus, Sherlock found his dominant emotion was disgust. More than anything else, he just wanted it over with.

"I have nothing to lose by killing you," Sherlock said. "You, on the other hand, have everything to lose. I doubt very much that your conception of the cosmos reaches beyond the material."

"Come to the point," Magnussen whispered.

He was trying to be brave. But his body was shaking.

"I came to offer you a deal," Sherlock murmured.

Magnussen's eyes opened as he heard the magic word.

"It's very simple," Sherlock said. "You will undertake never to harass, blackmail, intimidate, threaten, or otherwise harm Agnes Grace Rowena Addesley, formerly known as Mary Morstan, for the rest of your life. Additionally you will promise never to harass, blackmail, intimidate, threaten, or otherwise harm any children that John Watson has or may ever have, for the rest of your life. In return I promise not to kill you. If you accept the deal, I will leave the way I came. If you reject it, I will pull this trigger, and leave in a police car. In the long run, it makes no difference to me how I leave your house. For you, however, the difference is significant. I advise you to think carefully."

Magnussen's eyes seemed to become misty for a moment as he thought it over.

"And that is all you want," Magnussen said. "Those exact terms."

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, with a show of haste and impatience. "Those exact terms. Do you agree or not?"

Sherlock unlatched the safety.

"I agree," Magnussen said promptly.

"It's a gentleman's agreement, of course," Sherlock said, as Magnussen's body continued to tremble. "But you know now that I can reach you anywhere, any time--and that I have, if not exactly a license to kill, at least a license to kill  _you_. And if you don't keep your word in this one instance, that's exactly what I will do."

"I will keep my word," Magnussen said. 

Sherlock replaced the safety. He withdrew into the darkness. Before he'd reached the entrance to the suite, he heard the alarms going off. Magnussen naturally had a panic button. Naturally, also, the security guards on duty were, at this hour, congregated in Appledore's magnificent game room, which boasted several full-size snooker tables as well as a beautiful wide-screen television. The game room was of course located as far away from the master suite as possible.

Struggling up through the holes he had cut into the observation tower, Sherlock dragged himself back onto the roof. Looking up, he saw the helicopter descending. It too, he thought, is a magnificent piece of work, as beautiful in its way as this house. The radar-proof coating on the body and tail shimmered like gossamer in the light that was breaking through the house's floor-to-ceiling windows as the hunt went on below him. 

A cable descended from the helicopter. Sherlock grabbed it, swung himself into the sling at the end, and gave a tug. 

As the helicopter rose, the cable retracted. Mycroft reached out to pull him in. He was no bloody use at it, of course; but it was nice that he wanted to help.

Sherlock sat back against the curved wall of the bay. Mycroft slid the door shut. The helicopter pulled away.

"Well," Mycroft said. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, gasping a bit for breath. 

"You remembered to leave Harry out of the deal."

Sherlock snorted. "Of course."

Mycroft nodded. "Of course. I know. I just..."

Mycroft waved a hand.

"I'm not used to this," Mycroft said. "This...being involved. I find it distressing."

"Welcome to my world," Sherlock said.

Inside one of his jumpsuit pockets he felt a burst of vibration.

Sherlock unzipped the pocket and extracted his mobile. He read the message.

Mycroft looked up, mildly surprised. Well, of course he was surprised. Mycroft hadn't seen Sherlock cry since Redbeard died.

"It's a girl," Sherlock said, trying to swallow the tears.

"Yes?" Mycroft said. He was trying to be encouraging. It was the best he could do. He was, as he said, very new to all this caring.

"They've named her Rachel." 

Mycroft watched him in silence, his mouth curved in a faint expression of disdain. There was something else in the eyes, however, which stopped Sherlock from looking away in anger.

"Well," Mycroft said, finally. "This will make a nice birthday present."

END CHAPTER 19


	20. LETDOWN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place one hour prior to the previous chapter.

**ONE HOUR EARLIER**

Nothing. Nothing she had ever been through--not as Agnes, or as Eva, or as Tatania, or as Lizaveta, and  _certainly_ nothing she had ever been through as Mary Morstan--was as bad as this.

She had, by now, lost all sense of time. Thanks to the epidural she had also lost contact with about half of her body, though a tingling sensation in her gut warned her that it would soon wear off, and that when it did, things would get even more brutal. To think that for every human being on the planet there was a woman who had been through this. Or something worse. It was unfathomable.

She felt a shadow cross her. When she opened her eyes, John was standing over her. In his hands he held a tiny bundle wrapped in a blanket. On its head was a blue and pink striped hat. Its face was creased and wrinkled and its eyes were nearly closed--just puffy little slits, really. She stared at its face, unwillingly fascinated. She'd never seen a newborn so close up.

"Here she is," said John, with an infatuated smile. "Here's Rachel."

It was so odd to hear a woman's name applied to what looked, really, like something that could have come out of any mammal. Even now, though, she told herself. Especially now, you have to do it. Pull yourself together and be Mary. Be the baby's mother.

She opened her arms. John placed the baby inside them. His hand rested briefly on her breast. The touch seemed to make him cry. She looked up at him. It would help her. It was easier to cry when you were looking at someone else's tears.

"Rachel," she murmured, stroking the tuft of wet fuzz on its strangely misshapen head. "Is she--all right?"

John nodded. "Doing great," he said. "Got a perfect score on all the tests. How are  _you_ feeling?"

She laughed weakly. "I've been better."

"Poor Mary," John said, leaning over and kissing her forehead. "You've been so brave."

All touchy now, he was, all of a sudden. Since the night she gave him the data stick, they had had sex exactly twice. It had been intense, but in the end, unsatisfying for both of them. Eventually he started using the pregnancy as an excuse; but that wasn't it really. Well it didn't pay her to press him. She minded sex with John less than some of the other things about being 'married' to him--technically, John was accomplished enough, and reasonably gentle, and he didn't seem to want much in the way of postcoital banter, which was a great relief--but even before Sherlock had burned her, it had never seemed entirely convincing. If he was content to let it drop now, he'd get no complaints from her.

One of the fifteen nurses that apparently infested the birthing room loomed over her. "Shall we try to nurse now?"

Oh God. 

She had read about this. Breastfeeding released a hormone called oxytocin. It was the hormone that promoted bonding and attachment. She had brought this up in a rather sideways fashion with Harry on one of their clandestine lunches. Mary rather enjoyed these outings. She was too old, too burned out, and too tied down now to do any more  _real_ covert operations; but it gave her some pleasure to give John the slip and meet Harry on the sly. One day of course she would bring Harry back into the bosom of the family and get the credit for reclaiming the lost lamb and repairing John's only tie with the family. From a purely tactical point of view it made sense. But for now, it was just--well--fun, his not knowing where she was or what she was doing. Harry seemed to enjoy the game too, and even though she seemed unable to get through a lunch date without recourse to her flask, she was a very entertaining conversationalist. 

Oh for Christ's sake, Harry had said, on that occasion. Of all the patriarchal claptrap. If oxytocin was all there was to it, men would never bond with their children. Adoptive parents wouldn't. Nonbiological mothers wouldn't. Maybe there is some kind of hormonal thing that happens when you nurse. There could be. But there's more to any relationship than hormones. You can bond with the baby without breastfeeding, Harry had said. And if you want to bottle feed, then don't let anyone shame you out of it. John and I were both bottle fed and we turned out fine.

Well. Neither Harry nor John was exactly an advertisement for the Watsons' parenting. Still, Harry was very persuasive; and if anyone gave her grief about her choice, Harry could always be relied upon to stick up for another woman.

But with the nurse looming over her, and John smiling expectantly down at her, and exhausted and beaten down as she was, she was beginning to reconsider. Maybe what she ought to do was attempt it once, and then give up on it reluctantly when it didn't work. 

She nodded. The nurse positioned the baby's head. She lifted her nipple into its mouth, the way the nurse showed her.

"Oh look," said the nurse. "You see, she's already latched on. Your daughter's a natural!"

John's eyes filled with tears. She looked from his face down to the baby's head at her breast. She felt her own eyes tearing up. Such a tiny thing, nestled in there so trustingly. Drawing its life from her, her tiny hands curled as if clinging to some invisible thread. So hard to believe that this was the thing that had been growing inside her. She noticed for the first time all the little perfect details, the tiny nails on the fingertips and the folds in her neck. And the smell. Such a wonderful smell.

She looked up at John. And at that moment she realized that she loved him too. He had stood by her so faithfully, so bravely, after all that. She had never given him enough credit. It was wonderful, his loyalty, and even if there would always be Sherlock there before her, that didn't mean his love wasn't real. She had never appreciated that. She had never been capable of it.

It seemed like a whole lifetime that she lay there, holding Rachel's head, feeling the tingle as the milk flowed out of her body. Then Rachel's little eyes closed, and her head dropped away. She looked up at John.

"She's so beautiful," he said, blinking the tears out of his eyes. "And so are you."

He reached down to brush the hair out of her eyes. His touch sent something cold through her entire body.

She looked down at the baby with horror. 

Attachment. Right there, at that very moment. It had nearly happened. The one thing, the one thing above all others, that she did not want. The one thing on earth she could least afford.

As if in a dream, she allowed them to wrap her up and put her in the wheelchair. John placed the baby in her lap and proudly wheeled her through the corridors out to the patient room they had been assigned. She barely noticed any of it. She was too busy berating herself. How could you have let that happen? What is the matter with you? You're slipping, Agnes. You can't afford to slip. You slip, you fall, you fall, you die. You can't always count on John to protect you--or Sherlock, or Mycroft. They'll protect you as much as they know how as long as they think you love him. But they don't know what you're up against, not all of it. In the long run you have to protect yourself. In the long run, you're the only one who cares enough.

Lying on the patient bed, eyes closed, trying to get some rest, and her mind would just not stop tormenting her. You cannot do that again, she told herself. You cannot get that close. You cannot get attached. Attachment is death.

The baby was crying.

She opened her eyes. John was standing there, holding the baby out to her. It squirmed in his hands, its toothless mouth searching the air.

She blinked. When she opened her eyes they were wet.

"Would you feed her, John?" she said, in a faint and feeble voice. "I'll try again later. I'm just...I'm so tired. I'm just so tired."

She hadn't intended to cry when she said that; but never mind, it didn't hurt.

He nodded. "Of course, Mary," he said. 

She closed her eyes and turned on her side. 

END CHAPTER 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, about this chapter.
> 
> squire pointed out in a comment that for most nursing mothers the actual milk doesn't come in until around 3-5 days after the baby is born. I thanked her for doing this, because it helped clarify something about this chapter that had been unclear to me until that point and which is probably unclear to most readers as well. Actually it doesn't bother me that people who read this chapter seem to arrive at divergent ideas about what this Mary is really like. I wanted her to remain not totally explicable.
> 
> Anyway, my point is: I know that about the colostrum and the milk. And yet Mary, from whose POV this chapter was written, doesn't seem to know it. Why, I asked myself? And I realized that actually, what's happening in that first breastfeeding attempt is that Mary, who both wants attachment and is terrified of it, psyches herself into believing that nursing is 'forcing' her to bond with the baby. Then, after she's had a few moments to see what it feels like to actually be attached to her husband and child, she panics and psyches herself out of attaching to them. 
> 
> So the oxytocin thing is mostly in her head. What Harry tells her about oxytocin is, after all, perfectly true; if bonding to your child were purely a matter of hormones, then nursing mothers would be the only parents who ever bonded with their children. But Mary's been so worried about it for so long that as soon as she starts nursing she feels everything she was afraid/sort of maybe covertly hoping it would make her feel. And then she deliberately shuts it down.
> 
> Though at the time I wrote this chapter I wasn't totally sure whether or not Mary is able to form an attachment, I think that this is consistent with what John later finds out about her dosing Rachel with codeine. He interprets it as a sign that she's a pure psychopath, and this is really how most people would interpret it, because of course what Mary's doing is irresponsible and potentially fatal. But if she really had *no* attachment to the baby, the baby's crying wouldn't bother her any more than any other loud noise would. She coudl just put on an iPod and block it out. The fact that Rachel's crying bothers her enough that she has to resort to drugging her to keep her quiet actually indicates that on some level she is attached to the baby--but that she can't acknowledge that, is terrified of it, and is willing to do anything to avoid realizing this, including doing something potentially fatal to the baby just to keep the feelings that Rachel brings up in her at bay. 
> 
> At the end of the day, I guess my take on Mary in this story is that she may not be a pure psychopath; but she is still so deeply screwed up and so unwilling/unable to do anything about that that she is not safe to have either as a spouse or as a parent. Which I think is basically the only thing I could have done with what Moftiss handed us in HLV.


	21. READ IT AND WEEP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place four days earlier than the previous chapter.

**FOUR DAYS EARLIER**

For Lestrade to be late to a meeting with the superintendent was not at all unusual. Donovan had been over it with him about punctuality, about how his failure to kiss up to these old men in the petty ways that they demanded was hurting his advancement. It was more unusual, Donovan remarked despairingly, to see him burst into the meeting dancing.

Yes. He was dancing. Humming a little tune, waving a folded newspaper over his head as if it were Carmen's castanets, spinning about as if the superintendent's opinion of his pelvic gyrations was something that really mattered to him. 

He's mad, Donovan thought. This murder of Sherlock's has finally pushed him over the edge.

"Detective inspector," barked the superintendent, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Have you lost your mind?"

Lestrade executed one more move--really, Donovan thought, for a man his age he's in very decent shape, even if he is totally bonkers--and slapped the paper down on the table in front of the superintendent. 

"Read the headline, if you would, sir," said Lestrade, fading back to stand behind his accustomed chair.

With a wary glance at the still-giddy Lestrade, the superintendent picked up the paper. His eyes popped open. His jaw dropped.

"I meant read it out loud," said Lestrade. "Because I'm  _sure_ Donovan wants to hear this."

The superintendent tossed the paper across the table toward her. "Read it for yourself, Sergeant."

Donovan looked down at the headline. You couldn't miss it. In big, black, capital letters, it read:  **MAGNUSSEN FOUND TO BE ALIVE IN SHOCKER POSTCRIPT TO HOLMES TRIAL.** **  
**

"Jesus Christ," Donovan shouted.

"I  _told_ you!" Lestrade said, leaning over and slapping one palm down on the accompanying photo of Magnussen sitting at his desk, large as life, with the very same suit and glasses and perhaps just a hint of a suntan, unless that was just an effect of the cheap color printing process. Below the fold there was another photo of Dr. Watson standing in the street outside 221B Baker Street, with Sherlock in the background, wearing that stupid hat. She'd never have given it to him if she'd thought he would ever get to like it.

"How--" Donovan began.

"He says," Lestrade said, pulling out his chair and bouncing into it. "He  _says_ , that he just went away on holiday for a few weeks. He  _says_ that normally he doesn't alert the media when he goes on holiday. He  _says_ that he was on a privately owned island in the South Pacific which by design has no wifi or cell phone service and that he had no idea people would assume that he was dead just because he was incommunicado for a few weeks, or that anyone was on trial for his murder."

Lestrade sat back with a laugh, the wheeled chair rolling slightly backward. The superintendent seemed to be choking on something. But he found his voice at last.

"But the photos," said the superintendent.  

Lestrade hopped to his feet and leaned over the table, speaking slowly and maddeningly into the superintendent's face.

"I told you," Lestrade said. "I said, there's no body, there's hardly any blood, and CM Ltd. is just humming away as if nothing happened. I said you can't prosecute under these conditions. I said at least wait a few months to see if a body turns up. But  _someone_ ," Lestrade said, giving the table a final slap before subsiding into his chair, "thought it was a good idea to rush the case through. And whoever it is, I hope they've checked their Twitter feed today."

The superintendent shook his head.

"But--in that case--" He threw up his hands. "Why wouldn't Holmes enter a plea? Why wouldn't he take the stand? Why did he--just--SIT there, and let--"

"I don't know," Lestrade said, with a beatific smile on his face. " I don't care. All I have to say is, God bless those twelve men and women in the jury box, and God bless reasonable doubt."

Donovan shook her head.

Reasonable doubt had nothing to do with it. It was the best circumstantial case anyone could possibly have put together. Yes. She had been bothered by the fact that there was no body. There had never even really been a full-on attempt to look for one. Part of her role in this whole fiasco had been to deal with Magnussen's staff, and it had struck her at the time that for people supposedly grieving the loss of a wealthy and generous employer, they were being  _very_ pissy about making sure that the search for said employer's body didn't disturb the Appledore grounds. But nobody ever listened to her. Even without the body, she'd thought it would be open and shut. Well, she had been wrong. They all had.

"We will be slaughtered in the press," said the superintendent mournfully.

Lestrade folded his hands on the table, and glanced at the superintendent with a somewhat feral smile. 

"Well, sir," he said. "What was it you wanted to meet with us about?"

END CHAPTER 21


	22. A SCALPEL WIELDED WITH PRECISION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place three days earlier than the previous chapter.

**THREE DAYS EARLIER**

"Unfortunately, Lady Smallwood," said Mycroft sadly, "my brother is a murderer."

Lady Smallwood gave him a rather hard stare. He looked back at her with that bland half-smile he used on everyone. Even though he could surely read what she was sending him.

She signed the order. She handed it to Reginald. He bustled off with it. She rose from her seat. Unable to control their conditioning, all the men rose too. Lady Smallwood nodded at them, and left the room. 

She repaired immediately to her office, keeping the door open. When he left the hearing room, Mycroft would have to pass the doorway.

It took only a few seconds for her to get bored with waiting for him. By the time his shadow crossed the door, she was halfway through a classified document that had just arrived that morning. She leapt to her feet just as he passed out of view.

"Mr. Holmes," she called.

Mycroft's feet stopped. A few moments later he reappeared in the doorway. Even in his moments of greatest despair, Mycroft always wore that faintly supercilious look of insouciance. He had preserved, somewhere inside the bureaucrat's smooth skin and the operative's hard shell, a little boy capable of greeting even the darkest news with a refreshing burst of optimism. Since he could only express this optimism as world-weary sarcasm, however, most of his associates failed to recognize it.

"Come here a moment, would you please," she said. "I wish to speak with you."

Mycroft advanced, a bit warily. "Should I...?" he said, gesturing at the door.

"Please."

Mycroft pushed the door shut, taking care not to slam it, and stepped softly up to stand in front of her desk, as if waiting for a reprimand for a teacher.

"I am surprised at you," Lady Smallwood rapped out. "Surprised, and frankly disappointed."

He looked down in chagrin. She rose to her feet.

"Your brother was found innocent in a court of law."

"I cannot deny it," said Mycroft humbly. 

"Then where is the necessity for this rather desperate reversal?" said Lady Smallwood. "I advised you  _strongly_ against allowing him to accept that mission, and now  _you_ have manipulated me into signing off on it.  _Why?_ "

He looked up, and his face was suddenly heartbreaking. She had never seen him look so sad.

"I would never wish for you to feel manipulated, Lady Smallwood," he said meekly.

"I have just signed your brother's death warrant," said Lady Smallwood bitterly, doing her best to hide the hurt she felt for him. "I think that the least I am entitled to is an explanation."

Mycroft looked at her for a long moment. Then his eyes began scanning her office, looking at the drapes, the baseboards, the electrical outlets.

"My office is not under surveillance, Mr. Holmes," said Lady Smallwood. "I see to that myself, every morning when I first come in. But perhaps you would like to do the rounds yourself."

Mycroft's mouth curved back into his half-smile.

"I will take your word for it, Lady Smallwood."

She waited. He looked back at her with the oddest expression. Then he said, "We've been unable to locate Magnussen."

"Well we know a few hundred thousand places where he  _isn't_ ," Lady Smallwood said.

"He must of course reveal himself in the end, in order for his scheme to work," said Mycroft. "But I think he'll be more likely to do it once he believes Sherlock to be out of the country and headed for certain death."

"And what happens when Magnussen reveals himself?" Lady Smallwood said curtly.

"Then," Mycroft murmured deferentially, "with your permission, of course...I would see to it that Sherlock was recalled."

"See to it how?" Lady Smallwood pressed.

Mycroft smiled. "Through unofficial channels, of course."

Lady Smallwood crossed her arms.

"If by that you mean that you intend to activate the unapproved-but-secretly-in-development All-Screens-Access pilot program--"

Mycroft took in a hissing breath.

"Evidently you thought I didn't know about that," said Lady Smallwood. "Let me inform you that I also consider it  _highly_ dangerous to have placed this program under the direction of someone as obviously fragile as John Andersen."

Mycroft shrugged his shoulders. "He has Moriarty on the brain, it's true," said Mycroft. "But apart from that he's quite sound, and his technical expertise is beyond reproach."

"And after Sherlock has been recalled," said Lady Smallwood. "And Magnussen is back at the helm of CM Ltd, and still blanketing the country in his filth and still ruling us all by manipulating his hidden levers, then what?"

She tried to keep back the emotion in her voice, but she was not entirely successful.

"Well that rather depends on you, Lady Smallwood," said Mycroft.

He leaned forward over the desk to whisper into her ear.

"We have a plan," Mycroft murmured. "I don't wish to discuss it here. I don't doubt your thoroughness, but if I stay in your office too long people may ask questions. It doesn't absolutely require your cooperation but we should be glad to have it."

He drew back. Lady Smallwood put a hand up to her cheek. She fancied she could still feel the warmth of Mycroft's breath upon it.

"I should be glad to discuss the matter further at a future time, Lady Smallwood," said Mycroft, lowering his eyes before her. 

Lady Smallwood surprised herself by extending her hand. 

"I believe that I can promise you," she said, "that you will have my full cooperation."

Mycroft took her hand. His grip was not strong, but it was warm, and not at all clammy.

"And I can promise you," said Mycroft, "that your husband's death will be avenged."

The sentiment itself was startling enough. Before she had recovered from the shock, Mycroft raised Lady Smallwood's hand and pressed it to his lips.

He was gone while her hand was still in the air, floating as if his was still supporting it. 

She stood there for a moment, struggling to believe in what had just happened.

Slowly, Lady Smallwood resumed her seat. Then, after a moment's thought, she pressed Reginald's icon on her computer screen.

"Yes, Lady Smallwood," he said, from the bowels of whatever office the order authorizing Sherlock's mission to Eastern Europe had traveled into.

"Bring me the files from the Magnussen hearing."

"Very good, Lady Smallwood," he said, briskly. 

Lady Smallwood leaned forward in her chair. She rested her hands on the desk, the right hand on top of the left. She looked down at the skin on the top of her hand. Mycroft's lips had left no visible traces. She had the feeling, nevertheless, that her hand would never be the same. 

END CHAPTER 22


	23. EPIPHANY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place 22 days before the previous chapter.

**TWENTY-TWO DAYS EARLIER**

"Is this you?"

Lestrade slapped the photo down on the table, pounding it as hard as he could. Sherlock's eyes roved mechanically over it. He was aware that she should be studying it for some insight into his current hideous situation, but his mind wouldn't settle down, and the harder it was for him to focus the more panicked he became and the more scattered everything got. 

"No image ever fully coincides with its original," Sherlock said. 

He was startled to feel Lestrade's hand close like a vise on the back of his neck.

"Don't get smart. It's an honest question and I bloody deserve an honest answer.  _Is this you?_ "

It was a glossy print-out of a color photograph taken, most likely, through a telephoto lens. The setting was unmistakeably Appledore, at night, and the lighting clearly came from the helicopter in which Mycroft and the search team had been hovering. And yes, it was him, right arm extended, wishing Magnussen a merry Christmas while pulling the trigger; and that was Magnussen, taking the impact and falling backward. The only question Sherlock had about the picture, really, was who had taken it. Mycroft had agreed to wipe Magnussen's security cameras before leaving. Surely even love's young dream couldn't have made Mycroft  _that_ sloppy.

His hesitation further enraged Lestrade. With a final push on the back of Sherlock's neck, Lestrade strode off, then swung around the other edge of the table. Sherlock looked up at him unwillingly. He'd spent a fair amount of time over the past few years needling Lestrade--he was so square, it was so much fun to provoke him--but even after that fiasco with the bank heist he'd never seen Lestrade this angry.

"Why are you interrogating me?" Sherlock said. "This isn't even your case. It can't be. Nobody would let you near it."

"I'm not interrogating you," Lestrade said, with a little half-snarl. "This is a friendly little chat we're having off the record. When I start  _interrogating_ you, I promise you will know it."

"Well, then," Sherlock said, "I have enjoyed our little chat, but it must be time for me to be getting back to my cell."

"Damn you, Sherlock!"

Lestrade dropped into the chair. He rubbed his chin, looked away, let out an explosive breath, and then turned back toward him.

"What this looks like to me," he said, leaning over the table and tapping the photo urgently, "is you executing an unarmed man at point-blank range."

"Look, Gavin--" Sherlock began.

"You know my fucking name, Sherlock," Lestrade shot back. "Stop pretending you don't. I told you years ago your _games_ are going to land you in jail one day."

"I don't see the point of this," Sherlock said. "If what you want is a confession--"

"That's not what I want," Lestrade rapped out.

"Then what  _do_ you want from me?" Sherlock demanded. 

Lestrade lunged forward.

"I want you to tell me," said Lestrade, "that this is not what it looks like. I want you to tell me that you have at least a _tiny_ scrap of respect for the laws of England and for due process and for everything I bloody well stand for. I want you to tell me that you have not decided that because you're Sherlock Fucking Holmes you have the right to decide who lives and who dies. Because if this  _is_ what it looks like," Lestrade said, and now suddenly the anger seemed to be curdling into something far more discomfiting, "then Donovan's always been right. You're a psychopath, and I'm an idiot. If this is what it looks like, Sherlock," Lestrade repeated, harder and colder now, "then you and I are done. Forever."

And that was the problem with caring. It metastasized. Years ago it would never have occurred to Sherlock that he owed Lestrade anything. Now, looking into his hard but hurt face, Sherlock was starting to feel in his gut that unpleasant sensation he had been introduced to rather suddenly that evening at the Landmark when he saw John finally recognize him. Remorse, Mycroft had told him. That's generally the name people give to that feeling.

"It's not what it looks like," Sherlock said.

Lestrade returned his gaze warily.

"So that's not you in the picture."

"No, it is," Sherlock said.

"Sherlock--" Lestrade burst out.

"I didn't  _kill_ him!" Sherlock shouted. It surprised him how desperate his own voice sounded. 

"But you did shoot him?" Lestrade said, puzzled.

"Yes, but--"  
  
Sherlock leapt out of the chair and began pacing the room. Lestrade let him. He couldn't tell Lestrade this story. This interview was most likely being taped, and if he got into the details it would soon become dangerous to Mary. It maddened Sherlock that after all this John still insisted on protecting Mary's life to the extent that they could; but since that was probably the only reason John was allowing himself to abandon her, he had promised to go along with it.

"He was alive when I left the grounds," Sherlock said. 

"After you shot him."

"I told you it's not what it looks like. He's disappeared for now because it suits him. But I don't believe he's dead at all."

"So, what," Lestrade said. "Your theory is he's playing dead to frame you for his own murder?"

Sherlock shook his head. That was the theory he had been working on so far, but hearing Lestrade say it made it seem feebler than ever.

"It's a bit...well...a bit  _Downton Abbey,_ isn't it?"

Lestrade shook his head. He looked down at the photo. 

"It's true that nobody's found a body," Lestrade observed. "We're looking, of course. But in point of fact the only evidence we have right now that a murder was even committed is this photo, and a bit of blood on the terrace. And we wouldn't even have that if it hadn't been in the papers."

Lestrade's last word closed the circuit. The electrons began moving.

"Which papers?" Sherlock demanded, resuming the other chair.

Lestrade shrugged. "I don't know...this one I printed out from the Guardian's website. They put it on the front page."

"Give me your mobile," Sherlock said, extending a hand.

"Of all the nerve," Lestrade retorted.

"Or do it yourself then, but I need to know where that story originated and which papers are and are not carrying it."

With a baleful eye on Sherlock, Lestrade pulled out his mobile and began working on it, maddeningly slowly.

"Looks like it started in the Guardian," said Lestrade. "Some other papers picked it up but they're all referring to the Guardian story. The photo's always credited to them."

Sherlock's hand slapped the table.

"What?" Lestrade said.

Even after all this, he was willing to hear the theory. Good old Lestrade. He was hopeless at practicing the science of deduction himself, but he did have an honest appreciation for the theory.

"Magnussen's been trying to take over the Guardian for years," Sherlock said, as things began falling into place. "They've been at war with him for even longer. Somehow that photo was sent to the Guardian. They naturally assumed they had stumbled on a major government cover-up involving the death of their favorite adversary. They run the story. He stays out of the way for a few weeks while they continue their expose of an event that didn't take place. Then..."

Sherlock almost smiled; it was really rather a neat plan, for something that must have been thought up on the fly. 

"He's not trying to frame me," Sherlock said. "He can't be planning to stay dead that long. I've done it myself; I know how difficult and inconvenient it is, and I didn't have a multibillion-dollar international empire to run. What  _he_ wants is to dramatically reveal himself a few weeks from now, after the Guardian has doubled down on the story of his murder. They will  _have_ to deal with him then," said Sherlock. "Their credibility will be weakened, they'll be afraid of his taking action against him, probably their circulation will be affected..."

"He's done all this," said Lestrade, "so he can buy another paper?"

"Well of course if it also causes me suffering that's all to the good, from his point of view," said Sherlock. "But..."

Sherlock took a moment to think this through.

"Oh no," Lestrade said. "You've got that look in your eye."

"How long does it take to do a murder trial?" Sherlock said.

"Depends on the murder," Lestrade answered. "Trial itself usually doesn't run more than a week or two. It's building the case and getting on the docket and tagging all the evidence and so on, that usually takes a few months."

"But as you say yourself, there's very little evidence to deal with here, and if I didn't mount a defense..."

"Why wouldn't you mount a defense?"

"I have nothing to lose," Sherlock said. "If I'm convicted, it won't last long, because he's certainly going to resurface. He has to, in order to invalidate the Guardian's story. But if I'm acquitted..."

Lestrade regarded him rather coldly.

"And you would be," Lestrade said. "The Great Sherlock Holmes versus Mr. Slimy, no contest there. Juries don't vote based on logic, they really don't."

"If I'm acquitted," Sherlock said, "then he'll know that I can kill him with impunity. It would give me an enormous bargaining advantage over him, for the rest of his life."

Lestrade considered this.

"And you wouldn't just go right off and kill him," said Lestrade. "For real."

"No," Sherlock said. "I would not. And would you like to know why?"

"I certainly would."

"Because for any kind of justice to be done, Magnussen has to suffer. He has to suffer for years, and it has to get worse and worse as time goes by. I'd never kill Magnussen, Lestrade. I want him to think for years about how I brought him down."

Lestrade looked at him thoughtfully.

"No  _smart_ detective," Lestrade said, "would go to trial with a case like this."

"Of course not," Sherlock replied. "Certainly I wouldn't expect you to mix yourself up in it. There are limits to what even I would ask of an old friend."

Lestrade gave him a crooked little smile.

"Fortunately," he said, "the detective in charge of the Magnussen case is Athelney Jones."

Sherlock smiled back at him.

Before he could reply, there was a knock at the door. Lestrade went to open it. He spoke with the person on the other side, then pushed it open.

"Bail's been posted, Sherlock," Lestrade said. "Your lawyer's here to collect you."

*******

"Has John ever told you that you drive like a lunatic?" Sherlock observed, as Harry hauled away at the steering wheel.

"Many times," Harry replied. The little Honda went bouncing out into the roundabout. She had insisted on giving him a ride back to Baker Street, and he was very much regretting having accepted.

"Where's John?"

"He wanted to come," Harry said. "But, see, Mary won't let him out of her sight now, and he and I aren't supposed to be speaking to each other..." She sighed. "You know I keep calling her Mary even though I know that's not her name. It's so strange. She acts just like she always did, but you know it's all a lie, but she won't acknowledge that so knowing that jsut makes you feel like you're the nutter."

"Why are you not supposed to be speaking?" Sherlock said, to distract himself from the sight of another intersection approaching.

"We pretend we're still estranged," Harry said, "and then Mary, as a way of further ingratiating herself with John, will try to cultivate me privately, ostensibly in order to repair the breach, though really also in order to get more information about him with which to manipulate him. That way she will think she's getting me to trust her when in fact what's happening is that I'm getting her to trust me enough to give me access to the baby when the time comes."

Sherlock glanced at her. She was hunched over the wheel, peering intently through the windscreen, and slamming on the brakes at the very last minute.

"I had no idea that the mind of a Watson was capable of such cold-blooded deceit," Sherlock said.

Harry snorted.

"Well, Sherlock," she said, "if you ever break my only brother's heart the way  _that_ woman has, then you too will find out just how fucking devious I can be."

Sherlock looked away.

"So John told you what happened at Appledore," he said.

"He told me some of it," Harry answered. "The rest of it you can keep to yourselves, I think. I just--" She paused to give the bird to someone passing her on the left. "I mean...a mind palace? Really?"

Sherlock shook his head decisively. "No. He was lying. He must have been. He's got to have the documents. They're just not on the premises."

"Exactly," Harry said. "He can't be printing all this with no documentation to back it up. All he'd need would be for one victim to bring a libel action against him and he's done. In a libel action the burden of proof is on the defendant. And you can't just tell the jury to come into your mind palace." 

Sherlock considered this for a moment.

"If someone did bring a libel action against him," he said, "he'd have to produce the original documents, wouldn't he?"

Harry nodded. "I'm surprised no one's tried it," she said. "But I suppose it's the old story. Collectively, society would benefit from someone taking him down, but the price to the individual who did it would be so high that nobody's willing to make the sacrifice."

Harry gave the steering wheel a wrench. He realized she had finally pulled up outside 221B. Oddly, at that moment, he had no desire to get out of the car. He was busy finishing a thought.

If Magnussen had to defend himself against a libel action, he would have to produce the supporting evidence. That would mean going out to wherever his vaults  _really_ were. If he were being watched at the time, they'd be able to find his treasure trove that way. It was a better way of doing what they'd attempted to do at Appledore: get  _him_ to reveal the location.

Sherlock spun around on her. The look in his eyes seemed to frighten her a bit.

"In a lawsuit like this," Sherlock said, twisting around to face her. "They go through a--what--it's called discovery, isn't it, before the trial--"

Harry nodded.

"He'd have to go to the vaults for that," Sherlock said. "So we could find them and take them out. It wouldn't even matter what happened with the trial, he'd be neutralized."

"Well of course that would be illegal," Harry said warily.

"Yes of course it would, Harry, but not all of us have to care."

"Do it legally," Harry said firmly. "Win the action. That's what I say. If you win the action then he  _is_ neutralized because his credibility is shot and because someone's stood up to him and won. Let one person do that successfully and he's going to have a much harder time getting compliance the next time he tries it."

"How do you win a libel action?" Sherlock said.

His eagerness was rather disconcerting to her, he could see; but at the moment he didn't care.

"Well, first of all," Harry said, "the defendant can try to prove that the story was accurate. If he can't prove that, he can try proving that there was a reasonable basis in fact--you know, it may not have been true, but he had enough evidence that you can't blame him for thinking it was. But," Harry said, as the spark lit, "if you can prove the defendant published the story maliciously, that invalidates basis in fact. And of course he will have done it maliciously. So really, all you have to do is make sure that he can't prove that the story is true."

A moment later Harry said, "Sherlock...why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm not sure," he said, truthfully. "But I think that I may be trying to find out,  _without_ breaking your brother's heart...just how devious you are."

END CHAPTER 23


	24. CHRISTMAS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place on Christmas day (three days earlier than the previous chapter).

**THREE DAYS EARLIER**

_"Christ,_ Sherlock!"

John's face turned in horror and disbelief from the fallen body of Magnussen to the anguished face of Sherlock Holmes, pallid and ghastly in the light from the helicopters, looking back at him over his shoulder.

"Give my love to Mary," he said. "Tell her she's safe now."

Sherlock, keeping his hands carefully in the air, began lowering himself to his knees. John perhaps ought to do the same, but he couldn't. He was fixed to the spot. His entire brain was on fire and his body seemed to have petrified. Hideous consequences wheeled around him, drawing dark circles in the evening sky, gathering in a trembling cloud around the head and shoulders of the man who had just shot someone dead in front of him. Shot someone dead  _for him._ Without asking. Because he never asked. He never, ever asked.

Mycroft's lean and dark form distinguished itself from the other broader silhouettes tramping toward them. He never had much color at the best of times; his face, as it swam toward him, looked like a corpse's seen from the bottom of a well. One, two, three, four...well, that made six witnesses, including John, to Sherlock's murder. He would be dragged as far away into the bowels of the correctional system as they could get him. There was no way out. A unique career, a fascinating life, all that dazzling brilliance, all snuffed out in an instant.

For  _Mary._

Mycroft didn't even want to look at them. On his way toward Magnussen's body, at which John could not bear to cast a single glance, he merely nodded at the armed and armored policemen traveling with him: "Cuff them both and lock them in the helicopter. Then come back here. There's work to do."

"Hands on your head, please."

John allowed the black-suited strongman to snap the wristlets on him. With his hands chained before him, he stumbled across the grass after Sherlock, who was being walked by other officer. He put up no resistance. He knew it was over. 

Getting into the helicopter was a bit tricky; it still showed no desire to actually land. But the police officer finally bundled them both in, slammed the door, and left. They sprawled on the floor for a few moments. Sherlock stared dully up at the roof of the chamber with a look of complete indifference. John, unable to muster any reserves of stoicism, pulled himself onto his knees. From there, the sight of Sherlock's empty eyes and nearly slack mouth became instantly infuriating.

"What the  _fuck_ was that?" John shouted, rattling his cuffed hands in the direction of Sherlock's face. "Why? WHY would you do that to yourself? WHY?"

Sherlock blinked up at him, hurt. 

"It was the only way," he said, sadly. "It was the only way to protect Mary."

"You just killed a man in front of witnesses," John panted. "You are going to prison for the rest of your life. You made me an accessory to murder. And you say you did this to protect  _Mary?"_ John demanded.

"Of course," Sherlock said.

John could only respond with an enraged roar, which ended with him bringing his manacled hands down rather heavily on Sherlock's chest.

"Ow!" Sherlock cried. 

"WHY?" John roared again. "WHY in the name of ANYTHING? WHY?"

"I made a vow," Sherlock murmured, closing his eyes. His breathing seemed to be getting shallow. "I promised that no matter what, I would always be there for you and Mary..." He opened his eyes and turned them pleadingly on John's. "You love her...I know you're angry...but you don't want her hurt...you love her, and I couldn't just let him...do that to her...or you."

John let out a bitter laugh.

"You shot a man to death," John said, slowly, "because you're trying to keep a promise you made at my wedding."

Sherlock nodded, as if now it ought to all make sense.

"I have news for you, Sherlock," John said, clipping all the syllables short so they wouldn't get away from him. "There is no me and Mary. You cannot be there for something that does not exist."

Sherlock finally lifted his head.

"But...you were...patching things up..."

"Jesus, Sherlock!" John shouted, raising his chained hands to heaven. 

"It was for your own good..."

John seized Sherlock by the lapels of The Coat, and with the strength of rage hauled his torso up off the floor. John flung Sherlock's body awkwardly at the curved wall of the cabin. He lay there, his hips and shoulders askew, like a very disreputable-looking doll dropped by a very angry child. 

"Just stop doing things for my own good, Sherlock," John snapped. "Just stop. You're terrible at it. You're bloody awful. You have no idea what's good for me. None."

"In a year or two," Sherlock went on, as if John's side of this argument were not even happening. "You'll be over the worst of it and you'll be glad she's safe. You'll realize it was worth it."

"Sherlock," John barked, "if I thought Mary was worth it I would have shot the bastard myself."

Sherlock's eyes got larger. He shook his head.

"But you love her," he said. 

"I  _did_ love her," John said. "Or rather I loved the person she was pretending to be, right up until the point where I found out she put a fucking  _bullet_ into you." _  
_

John was vexed with his own voice for breaking. At least the sound seemed to have roused Sherlock to something closer to his ordinary waking state.

"But you forgave her," Sherlock said. "You made her that little speech. We worked on it together."

It took all of John's patience not to punch him in the head.

"I'm jollying her along until after the baby is born, Sherlock! I thought you understood that! Christ!"

"Oh, NOW you tell me!" Sherlock shot back, with a bit of his old spirit.

 

"You see? Great big deducing brain the size of a planet and you can't figure that out. You don't know anything about me and Mary. You don't even know anything about me and you."

Sherlock looked at him, puzzled. John felt just insane enough to keep going.

"You stupid bastard!" John shouted. "I would never even have married her if you hadn't  _died!"_

"Oh, so now your marriage is my fault."

The helicopter gave a little hiccup. Sherlock's head banged against the side of the cabin. John gave a little grin of satisfaction.

"Sherlock," John said, calm now and feeling really quite ready to do murder. "You were not here to see what your little  _stunt_ did to me. For a full year I was a completely and total arsehole to everyone I knew."

"Surprised anyone noticed," Sherlock muttered.

John ignored him. "Harry reached out to me. I told her to go to hell. Lestrade dropped by. I told him to fuck off. Molly brought casseroles. I dropped one of them out the window. Mycroft tried to pick me up in one of those black cars. I slashed the right front tire. I accused my therapist of being a government spy. All I wanted to do, for twelve solid months," John said, into his still-uncomprehending face, "was sit by myself in a corner, wrapped around my big ball of pain, and drink until I fell asleep. That is what your death did to me."

"Sounds more like something you did to yourself," Sherlock replied. 

"Don't you fucking dare." John grabbed the collar of Sherlock's shirt and pulled his face close. "You put me through that. For what? For nothing. And you  _never_ told me why." 

Sherlock's dark eyes blinked back at him. John could see nothing in them but his own reflection. He released Sherlock. Sherlock's head fell back against the cabin wall.

"Finally I realized I would need a source of income. I started up that practice and advertised for an assistant. Mary answered the advert. I thought she was an angel sent by God to get me through it. I really did."

Remembering those early days made him burst into tears.

Sherlock struggled to sit up. "You see, you do love her."

"There is no  _her!_ " John shouted. "My Mary never existed. I don't know who this woman I'm married to is and I don't care. Because I know what you are to me now, even if you don't."

Now all of a sudden Sherlock was interested. 

"And what am I?" Sherlock shot back, as the color began to return to his cheeks.

John had to take a few deep breaths first. 

"You're the one person on earth I know I will never be tired of," he said. "You're the only person I would die for, you're the only person I would still kill for. You're the reason I want to get up in the morning. You're the meaning of life. You are it, for me. Nobody else will ever be more important to me than you are. I don't love Mary, Sherlock. I love you. There. I fucking said it. I LOVE YOU."

It was not that much of a surprise, really, to see Sherlock lunging for him. It was slightly more of a surprise to see Sherlock throw his joined wrists over John's head, so that the metal of the handcuffs bit into his neck as Sherlock pulled John's mouth onto his.

John took Sherlock's face in his own hands. Sherlock leaned back against the cabin wall as John crawled over him. The kiss went on, while their legs entwined, while the cuffs barked against each other, while the fury of sudden release burnt up whatever remained of self-consciousness or prudence. It was the first time and it was liable to be the last. Unless they did finally end up sharing the same prison cell.

John paused for breath. Sherlock's eyes were large, and dark, and softer than ever. His lips parted, at first, in a soft sigh. And then he said, "Capital, John. If you could only have brought yourself to inform me perhaps an hour earlier..."

John shook his head. "I cannot believe you shot that bastard. With my gun."

"I didn't understand, John, I thought--"

"Hang on," John said.

Suddenly he felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. Sherlock began to look concerned.

"John, if we could return to our--"

"You didn't shoot him with my gun," John said, sitting back up and pointing at him. "You couldn't have. Magnussen's goons confiscated it before they let me on the helicopter."

"You're raving, John. The stress has obviously unhinged you."

"No," John said, stabbing with that accusing finger. "No. I didn't still have my gun. You shot him with...something else..."

It was hard to know exactly what gave it away. But suddenly he knew.

"You son of a bitch!" John shouted, pounding as hard as he could on Sherlock's chest. "You MISERABLE FUCKER!"

Sherlock's solemn face began to buckle, then twist, then burst into laughter.

"I had you," Sherlock gasped. "The look on your face...it was better than in the subway car..."

"Magnussen's not fucking dead, is he?"

"No!" Sherlock shouted, lifting up his hands and laughing until his body shook. "Come on, John. What do you take me for? Two years I spent crawling in and out of the deepest pits of Eastern Europe, telling jokes in Serbo-Croatian that you wouldn't get even if they were in English, and you think I can't come up with an alternative solution to the problem of Charles Augustus Magnussen?"

"Then what the fuck was--"

"All this time and you still don't get it," Sherlock said, ruffling John's hair with his manacled hands. "Why do I do these things to you. Because I  _do_ know, John. I always know. I know you better than you know yourself. First day I met you. You didn't think you could walk without support. I knew you could. I tricked you; and now you know what I know. After I came back, you thought you'd never forgive me for what I did to you. I knew you would. I tricked you; now you know what I know. You thought you'd never be able to tell me you were in love with me. I knew you could. I tricked you. Now you know what I know."

"And now," John said, "you can fucking stop tricking me."

Sherlock looked at him. He became serious.

"Yes," he said. "I can stop. My Christmas gift to you, John. No more. That was my last trick. You know it all now." 

John struggled forward. 

They kissed again, leaning back against the door to the helicopter. John's hands got trapped between his stomach and Sherlock's. Sherlock's were still around the back of his neck. The cold metal gave the sensations a bit of an edge but all the same, John was looking forward to someone finally taking these damn things off. It made things so awkward and elbowy and--

The door to the helicopter popped open. Sherlock fell backwards out of it, dragging John with him.

Winded by the impact, John rolled over onto his back on the grass. He blinked up at the still-pallid face of Mycroft Holmes. He didn't look happy. 

"Well?" Sherlock demanded.

"They're not here."

"What do you mean they're not here?"

"My operatives have given the place a thorough going-over. There are no secret doors, no bookcases that spin around, no hollow bricks, no concealed basement. There is no space unaccounted for. The vaults are not at Appledore, Sherlock."

Sherlock seemed more flabbergasted by this than by anything else that had happened up to that point.

"Not at Appledore!" he repeated. "You said you were  _sure!_ "

Mycroft looked away, angrily. Then, as if he were vomiting, he said, "I was wrong."

John looked up at the house. The police officers were coming back. They were carrying their body armor instead of wearing it. They all sported latex gloves. Magnussen's body still lay on the terrace.

"Well  _where are they?"_ Sherlock cried. "I refuse to live in a world where that feeble mind-palace bluff could actually be true. So  _where are they?"_

"No idea, brother mine," said Mycroft bitterly. "I must ask you to wait to gloat until we are safely away. Dr. Daystrom estimates Magnussen will recover consciousness in approximately twenty minutes, and we must be well away by then."

"Can you...?" Sherlock said, gesturing with the handcuffs. 

"No," Mycroft snapped. "These japes of yours may amuse Doctor Watson, but I find them increasingly tedious. Into the helicopter, both of you, and thank God that a tiny shred of sympathy for all lovers now lurks in the depths of my heart."

John stared at him. 

"IN!" Mycroft barked. "NOW!"

 Sherlock grabbed the edge of the open doorway, hoisting himself in with what John judged to be an unnecessary though of course not unwelcome amount of rearguard action. John followed him. Mycroft tossed his coat in after them. John searched through it and took his mobile out of the other pocket.

It was hard, in the handcuffs. But he did manage to type out one text to Harry. 

Sherlock saw him doing it. It said, I'M READY.

The door to the helicopter clanged shut. 

END CHAPTER 24


	25. SPECTER OF THE GUN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place twenty minutes before the beginning of the previous chapter.

**TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER**

Christmas Day, 2013, Sherlock thought. Make a note of it. That was the day that Charles Augustus Magnussen LOST HIS MIND.

The big blonde wooden doors to the closet were wide open. Sitting in the center of it, bathed in white light shining from the glowing panels set into the walls, was Magnussen. His eyes were closed, and his fingers curled and writhed in the air as he murmured to himself. He looked like a squirrel dreaming of gathering nuts. He looked like a senile old man trying to remember the sensation of taking off a girl's lace panties. He looked as if he really ought to be alone with his invisible porn.

"So there are no documents," John finally said. "You don't actually...have anything here."

Sherlock listened to Magnussen lie to him. He was trying to work out what the man's game could possibly be.

"But if you just know it," John said, "then you don't have any proof."

"Proof?" Magnussen said, opening those blue eyes innocently. "What would I need proof for? I'm in news, you moron! I don't have to prove it, I just have to print it."

No. No, it couldn't be. He was telling this lie to try to get them to give up. And on John, it was working. He might as well pretend it was working on him too, until he could think of something better.

"Sherlock, do we have a plan?"

The look on John's face was exquisitely painful. All that faith, dying before his eyes as John watched Sherlock get it wrong.

"Sherlock!"

John gave up in disgust and walked away.

As soon as John reached the terrace Sherlock ran. Where he was headed, he wasn't quite sure. He had to find something he could use to incapacitate Magnussen for an hour or two. That way, when Mycroft and his team arrived, they could search the place without his knowledge, then disappear before he knew anything about it. It would have to be a clandestine search. Magnussen was wrong about one thing; that laptop did not in fact contain any state secrets. It was the one Mycroft used solely for social media. He told their parents it was top-secret to keep them from snooping in it. Giving Mycroft grounds for a search of Appledore had never been part of the plan. The plan had been to make Magnussen reveal the location himself. It was an enormous estate. Now they would have to find the vaults in spite of him; and once Mycroft knew where they were and how to access them, an accident of some sort would be easy enough to arrange. A leak in the right water pipe would take care of it.

Up in the master bath, Sherlock went through the medicine cabinet. A vast array of personal grooming products, but not one sleeping pill or bottle of cough syrup. God damn him for a clean-living man.

Sherlock thundered down the stairwell and tore through the house. Liquor cabinet might have been some use if he'd had anything to spike it with. Nothing worthwhile in the kitchen. What about the staff? Maybe in the staff quarters...he ran through in his mind all the people who worked at Appledore, all of whom had of course been given Christmas off. Butler, cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, team of cleaning women, groundskeeper, team of landscapers, zookeeper...

Zookeeper.

Yes. Magnussen kept several exotic animals, including a baboon, a cheetah, a free-range Burmese python, and two small sharks that lived in the reflecting pond. 

Staff rooms were on the bottom level. Only part of the building with no windows. He slipped down the spiral staircase and began rushing along the corridor. Found the door to the zookeeper's room. Freezer full of raw meat, dead mice, other delicacies. On a pegboard on one wall, a variety of leashes, prods, and chains. Mounted next to the pegboard, a sleek black handgun.

Sherlock lifted it down. 

Not a handgun. A tranquilizer gun. And it was even loaded. 

Five seconds later, Sherlock was racing back to the ground floor with the tranquilizer gun in his coat pocket, along with two or three extra darts. Who knew how many darts it would actually take to bring the old rhinoceros down.

When Sherlock walked in, trying to seem dejected, the place was empty. Magnussen was standing out on the terrace. One of the huge glass panels in the wall was open, and John had followed him out. 

"They're taking their time, aren't they?"

"I still don't understand," said John.

Sherlock stood behind them. He tried to look defeated. That would be important. They'd both have to think that he was desperate, or none of it would be credible. The tranquilizer gun, in the dim light, would pass for a real one. The darts were unfortunately day-glo orange; but of course John would look away as soon as he heard the report, and he wouldn't want to look back. Mycroft wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the helicopter, of course. But he'd probably tell his goons not to shoot until he'd investigated the situation. As for Magnussen, Sherlock half-hoped that the moment before Sherlock pulled the trigger might give him a bona fide heart attack.

Poor John, Sherlock thought, watching Magnussen play with him. He has a few very bad moments coming up. So does Mycroft, though of course Mycroft deserves them. But. But but but, Sherlock thought, as Magnussen began laughing at John's humiliated face. So does Magnussen. _So does Magnussen_.

END CHAPTER 25

 


	26. CHRISTMAS EVE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place the night before the previous chapter.

**TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS**

Sherlock lay in bed making a list of all the things he would not miss about his hospital room. Surprisingly, morphine was one of them. He'd been on it so long now he'd gotten sick of it. The hidden benefits of a long-term hospital stay.

Being the prey for any well-wisher who happened by was another. Sherlock watched the handle of the door to his room turn with feelings of unmitigated dread. He would much prefer to lie there alone and have dreams of Magnussen-related revenge, but nobody ever believed that. If it wasn't Molly with some sort of pot plant it was Greg with a bar of chocolate. Though Greg at least usually had news of at least one murder to share, and to be fair to Molly, she always kept the visits short. Unless of course she caught Greg in. God, watching the two of them make eyes across his crisp white sheets, he'd be glad when that was over. 

John he had seen comparatively little of. Well. He and Mary must be keeping each other very busy at home. 

But this one...the visitor walking in under the tinsel-festooned lintel at this moment...that was unexpected.

"Mycroft," Sherlock said. "Have you come for a gloat?"

Mycroft didn't return the sally--not even with a Look. He simply drifted forward, actually sat down on the edge of the bed, bored into Sherlock with those penetrating eyes, and after a long and extremely awkward moment of mutually antagonistic silence said, "I've just had a call from Lady Smallwood. Her husband is dead."

Sherlock blinked. Somewhere inside he felt a twinge that was not related to the still-healing chest wound.

"Suicide?" Sherlock said.

"Of course."

Sherlock scrutinized Mycroft's face closely. It was of course difficult to tell. But the corners of his mouth were trembling, just a little. It appeared that this news made him...sad.

"Lady Smallwood is devastated," Mycroft went on, hollowly. "She was devoted to him. Why, I've often wondered."

"He never deserved her," said Sherlock.

"There we agree, brother mine."

My goodness, Sherlock thought, as he studied his brother's expression. I believe I am witnessing a true Christmas miracle. I think that I am actually watching Mycroft's heart grow three sizes today.

"I'm sorry I failed to recover the letters," Sherlock said. "That was the original object of our visit to Magnussen's office."

Mycroft waved at him. "Such things happen. From the movies you would never guess what the failure rate on covert operations is. However. I know my little brother. I know he does not take these setbacks lying down. Metaphorically speaking."

Sherlock groaned. Mycroft didn't bounce it back. He was all business tonight.

"Sherlock," he said. "Whatever harebrained scheme you are hatching now in your quest to take down Magnussen..."

"I know, I know," Sherlock murmured.

"...I want in on it."

Sherlock sat up straighter. He peered at Mycroft. He cleared his throat.

"My official position remains that Magnussen is an occasionally useful irritant that needs to be tolerated for the greater good of the commonwealth," Mycroft said promptly. "Asked about Magnussen at any time or place where anyone could possibly overhear the conversation, I will strenuously advise you against pursuing your vendetta."

"Naturally," Sherlock nodded.

"My actual position," Mycroft said, "I will communicate to you now, once and once only."

"I am all attention," said Sherlock.

Mycroft took a deep breath.

"I admire Lady Smallwood extremely," he said. "I have never met another woman who combines such integrity and probity with such intelligence and candor. The knowledge that this man has broken her heart distresses me greatly. I desire to see him brought low and kept low. I desire to have had a hand in doing it."

The poor bastard. The family disease had finally struck him. Love. Hopeless, unrequited, inescapable love.

"It would be convenient to have the use of one of your helicopters," said Sherlock.

"Done."

"I will have to pretend that I am selling him your state secrets."

"Pretend away. You may not have any real state secrets. Why the pretense?"

"My object is to get him to invite me to Appledore and reveal to me the entrance to his vaults."

"Perfect. My mission will be, once they are revealed, to destroy them utterly."

Mycroft's lips pulled back from his teeth in a partial smile. Sherlock smiled back.

"I think we'll make a good team," he said.

"One wonders why we never worked together like this before," Mycroft replied.

"Your heart's finally in it," Sherlock answered.

Mycroft grimaced.

"Is this what it feels like?" he said. "Having a heart? Caring?"

"Does it hurt?"

"Certainly."

"Then yes."

END CHAPTER 26


	27. LIKE LOVE I SAY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place three months earlier than the previous chapter.
> 
> ****  
> Last chapter proper! There will be an epilogue. But this is the end. Or rather, the beginning.

**THREE MONTHS EARLIER**

It's 2 am, John suddenly thought, as he pressed the doorbell again. I hope this is the right flat. There are a lot of Watsons in London. 

The building didn't have a doorman; but at least the door had a peephole. John heard someone standing on tiptoe on the other side of the door, looking through it. Then he heard a muffled exclamation in what he was pretty sure was the right voice.

There was a clacking of chains and a turning of knobs. The door swung open. Harry was standing behind it, wrapped in a fuzzy yellow bathrobe that looked so unlike anything he would ever have expected her to buy that for a moment he wasn't quite sure he recognized her face. She put the fingers of one hand through her wildly disordered hair, squinted at him with her nearsighted eyes, and said, "John?"

"This isn't a good time," John said, promptly. "I'm sorry--I'll--"

"No, no no no." Harry stepped back and motioned him in. "Please. Come in."

John took a deep breath and walked through the doorway.

When it shut behind him it felt like a portcullis coming down. He'd spent the past few days inside a bubble from which everyone but himself, Mary, and Sherlock was excluded. Sherlock was the only one who knew about Mary. Well, apart from Magnussen of course. But Sherlock was in hospital. Apart from Sherlock, Mary was the only one who knew that John knew about Mary. He would look at her and try to pretend he didn't know but he couldn't. She would see him trying and failing and her face would fall. She was miserable. He was miserable. And yet he couldn't stand to be around anyone else.

Here he was in Harry's apartment. He'd never been in it before. She'd only moved to London in September. She'd sent him the address and he'd lost it. He'd never called her. He'd never tried to see her. Now here he was on her doorstep and in a state at 2 a.m. It was a miracle that she'd even opened the door.

Without quite realizing it he discovered he was sitting on a stool drawn up to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. There was a cup of tea in front of him. He picked it up and sipped at it. Harry sat in the kitchen side of the bar, elbows on the flat granite top, drinking her own cup of tea.

"I'm sorry I haven't called," John said, dully.

Harry waved it away. "I haven't called you either."

He glanced around the flat. What he could see of it looked very unlike Harry's previous residence in Norwood.

"Nice place," he said.

Harry shrugged. "So far I'm keeping it neat."

It struck him at last that it was 2 a.m. and Harry was, as far as he could tell, neither drunk nor hung over.

"Practice going well?"

"Reasonably," she said. "Moving to London's actually made things easier. Most of my Norwood clients are commuters anyway."

John nodded. They sipped at their tea.

"So--" Harry began.

"Well-" John said, at the same moment.

Harry pushed her empty cup away. "Go ahead."

John reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. He pulled out the data stick. He laid it on the counter in front of Harry's saucer. He watched her reading the letters. A.G.R.A.

"What's that, John?" Harry said.

John was seized by a feeling of nostalgia so overwhelming that it almost became panic. So much trouble they'd both gotten into, growing up. So many moments in his young life when he had cocked something up far beyond his capacity to deal with it. And before Dad found out, he would bring it to Harry. He'd hand her something, some piece of incriminating evidence, some ill-gotten bit of contraband, some token of a forbidden adventure, looking up at her with fear and dread, begging her silently,  _don't let him find out. He'll kill me._ And there would always be this moment when she looked at it and drew that precise breath and then said, "What's that, John?" Only when she said that it wasn't just her asking for information or demanding a confession. "What's that, John?" really meant, _It'll be all right. T_ _ell me the story. Let me see what I can do._

"It's about Mary," he said.

**FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES LATER**

The data stick lay on the counter. It was the only item that hadn't been moved since he dropped it. The cups had been filled, emptied, filled again. Harry's stool was drawn back a bit from the bar, as if she were trying to get even just a few more inches of perspective on the events he had just related to her.

"I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting when you turned up on the doorstep in the middle of the night," Harry finally said, "but it definitely wasn't this."

She shook her head. John laughed. Harry looked up at him.

"Jesus, John," she said. "Where do we find them?"

John sighed. "In my case, she answered an advertisement for a physicians' assistant."

Harry's eyes narrowed a bit.

"So..." Harry gestured at the data stick. "Have you...?"

John shook his head. "No. That's why I..."

Harry waited.

"You see," he broke out suddenly, "you're not a psychopath. You may be a drunk. You may have been a real bitch to me on many occasions and you may have let me down more or less constantly throughout our adult lives but one thing you are not is a psychopath."

Nice, John. You're really doing a bang-up job of repairing this breach.

"I could make a similar list of things you might have done," Harry said curtly. "But. You are correct. I am not a psychopath."

"Since you're not a psychopath..."

John pushed the data stick in Harry's direction.

"Mary told me not to read this in front of her," he said. "She says I won't love her when I've read it."

"Did she," Harry said, staring down at it.

"If I look at it," John said, as his voice became unreliable, "I can't un-see whatever's on it. If I..."

Harry looked up at him. "It's all right, John," she said, gently.

"I love her," John said. "I love her so much. I can't stand to lose her. But...but what if...I mean what if there's something on that data stick...that I really...that it would be dangerous...not to know?"

Harry watched him fight off the tears for a few moments.

"Would you like me to read it?" she said.

John nodded.

"And then tell you what I think you need to know."

"Yes," he said, with great relief.

She looked at him for a moment.

"All right, John," she said. "I'll get my laptop."

John stayed exactly where he was. From his position all he could see was the flecks in the granite countertop. From the changes in the light and the sounds around him he knew Harry had opened up her laptop and put in the data stick. He heard her moving the tracking pad, clicking, clicking again, clicking again.

"John," she finally said. "Are you sure this is the right data stick?"

John's head snapped up. The back of Harry's laptop was facing him, opaque as a black curtain. Harry frowned into the screen, a look of puzzlement on her blue-tinged features. 

"I'm sure," he said, emphatically.

Harry's eyes flicked down to it. "It is labeled, I suppose."

"Is it--how bad is it?" John said. Maybe it wasn't very bad at all. Maybe that was why Harry was surprised by it. Maybe Mary...he knew how it was, things that everyone else thought were completely justifiable, they felt so horrible to  _you_ , just because you were the one who did them, that you felt as if they were crimes against humanity--

"Well," Harry said. "I hardly know how to answer that question."

John peered at her over the top of her laptop screen. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Harry turned the laptop around. John flinched away from it, closing his eyes.

"It's empty, John," Harry's voice said.

He kept his eyes closed. "What?"

"There is no data on this drive."

He opened his eyes. Harry's computer screen was filled with open window after open window. All of them empty boxes.

"She's made up a bunch of files with appropriate titles," Harry said. "Family history, work history, contacts, missions, et cetera. But when you click on the file, it's empty."

John shook his head. He started closing the windows. He opened them again. He closed them again. He opened them again.

"Has anyone had access to this data stick since she gave it to you?"

"Nobody but me," John said, in a voice that was starting to sound a bit hoarse. 

"There are no records of any of these files having been modified since their creation," Harry replied. "They're dummies. They've always been dummies."

John's mouth began to hang open.

"But..." He trailed off. He made another stab at using words. It was difficult. "Why?"

"I'll tell you why, John."

Harry had lost that puzzled look. He recognized her new look instantly. He had seen it so often as a child. Anger. Smoldering, thickening, soon-to-be-exploding anger.

"It's a test," Harry said. "It's a fucking test. She wants to know whether she's safe with you or not. If you still love her, if you still  _want_ to love her, then you won't read this thing, will you, because you can't bear to lose her and she's told you it will kill your love for her. So if you don't read it, she knows she's safe. If you  _do_ read it, well, your marriage is over, but in every other way she's still safe because she has told you  _nothing."_

John found himself blinking rapidly. His eyes were stinging. The computer screen had gone rather blurry.

"And she gets the points," Harry said, bitterly. "She gets the points for honesty. Look, John, I love you so much I will tell you the horrible truth about myself. I'll make myself vulnerable for you. I may have lied to you before but I'll sacrifice everything to be honest with you now. Only don't read it, John, don't read it if you love me."

John started opening the folders again. Harry reached over and slammed the laptop shut.

"She may as well have filled it in," Harry said, viciously. "Because I know her whole story now."

"I don't--" John began, but Harry wasn't waiting.

"She answered your advertisement," Harry said. "She sought you out. You had something she wanted and she went after it. She saw how much you need to be loved and she used that against you. She's still using it. She's still banking on how much we want to trust. How much we want to believe that our loyalty will be repaid in the end."

"Harry," John said.

Harry stopped talking. She leaned back and folded her arms.

"Well," she said. "The first thing is, you need to establish your biological relationship to the child."

"What?" John said. 

"Your marriage is fraudulent. It's based on false information."

"So..."

"So you will be in very poor shape from a custody rights point of view if you can't establish that you're the biological father."

John shook his head. "Custody rights?"

Harry stared back at him.

"I can't leave her," John said, panic rising in his throat. "I can't leave her. I love her."

"John--" Harry threw out her hands at him. He flinched away.

"Sherlock said--she must really love me--or she wouldn't have called the paramedics--"

Harry brought both hands down on the counter with a slap that almost made the laptop jump.

"John!" she barked. "I don't know whether it was the morphine or what. But his analysis of your situation is false, and every conclusion he's drawn from it is wrong."

"How can you know that?" John shouted.

"Because!" Harry shouted.

Her gesture of emphasis was so violent it nearly threw her off the stool. She leaned forward, supporting herself on her elbows as she tried to hammer it all home.

"You are not safe in that relationship, John," Harry said. "You need to get out of it."

"Not  _safe!_ " John exclaimed.

"She kills people for a living. That means she has no respect for human life in the abstract. This little trick with the data stick means she has no respect for you or for your feelings. Since it had to be prepared in advance, it is also a sign that she is extremely calculating and manipulative. She went looking for Sherlock with this in her pocket. She was thinking moves ahead. She was on her way to find a man she'd already shot, possibly to finish the job, and she still took the time to create this little bluff in case she decided it was better to pretend to make a clean breast of it. She _shot_ your best friend. The man she certainly knows you cannot do without."

"But she called the paramedics," John said.

"What did I tell you about the moves ahead?" Harry shouted back. "She shoots him, then she calls the ambulance. If he dies, good, he's silenced forever. If he doesn't die, great, he can go on helping you protect her from the people who are threatening her, and she gets the points for having tried to save him. Either way  _she_ is covered and this is my fucking point, John," Harry cried. "It will ALWAYS, ALL THE TIME, be about her. She does not care about anyone else. Not Sherlock, not you. She gave him a chance because it suited her to do it. If it had not suited her she would have shot him dead. If one day it suits her for  _you_ to be dead, she will shoot you with just as little compunction. You can't live with someone for whom you are only a tool to be used, John."

The tears were standing there in her eyes. They began to fall.

"You're not safe with her," Harry said. "You're not safe. You have to get out."

John closed his mouth and shook his head.

"John," Harry said, despondently.

"You're wrong," he cried. "You're wrong. She does love me. You don't understand. You don't understand."

Harry went on crying, silently. Then she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath.

"It's all right," Harry said. Her voice was dry and firm now, as it always was when she was sober. "I keep forgetting. It's only been...a week?"

"Nine days," John said.

"A loss like this takes time to register," Harry said, "You still haven't accepted it. You still think she'll come back to you one day."

"Harry, she's not dead. She loves me. She does."

Harry hopped down from the stool and went rummaging in the purse that sat on the living room table. She extracted a small white card from her wallet, then brought it back to the counter. She put it into his hand. He looked at it.

It said HARRIET WATSON AND ASSOCIATES. 

"Call me when you're ready," Harry said.

John looked at her. "For what?"

"For the laying-down of the law."

Against all reason, John almost laughed.

"You do enjoy that, don't you," John said. 

Harry's mouth twitched in a half-smile.

"The law is a machine invented by men of property for the maintenance of existing power structures," Harry said, quite seriously. "But a machine will do the will of whoever's at the controls."  

She pulled the data stick out of her laptop and handed it to him. He slipped down from the stool and put it into his pocket, along with Harry's card.

John thrust his hands in his pockets. 

"Thanks, Harry," he said. "I mean...you're wrong about Mary and me. Of course you're wrong. But...thanks."

Harry darted forward and put her arms around him. He was so startled he let her do it. 

"Safe trip home, John," she said. "Take care. When you're ready, I'll be here."

She opened the door. He went through. It closed and she was out of sight.

He heard her voice on the other side of the door.

He recognized the tone of it. She was reciting something to herself. Harry loved poetry. She didn't talk to him much about it; he had never seen the point of it. But at the odd and dark moments that their childhood had been full of, she had been known to sit by herself, in a closet or in the bathroom, reciting some thing or other that they'd learned in school. She said it made her feel better. She must feel pretty bad, if she were doing it now.

He could only catch a few words of whatever it was.

... _timid boast_   _anyway,_  Harry's voice said, on the other side of the door. _Like love I say._

THE BEGINNING

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few little notes...
> 
> **IT'S LADIES' NIGHT!**
> 
> Dear Moftiss: I used your underutilized female characters for you. They were awesome. It wasn't that hard. Love, me.
> 
> All these years in the fandom and I have successfully avoided hating Mary...until right now. Well, as compensation for being brought to the point of writing an anti-Mary story, I decided to do as much as I could for all the other female characters. Janine, for instance. Not a huge fan of her in the actual S3, but in this story, what a welcome addition to the cast!
> 
> So, Moftiss, would you like to know how to utilize underutilized female characters? You know, just in case?
> 
> Here's the secret: _Sometimes, when it doesn't actually matter whether the character who does the thing is a boy or a girl, use a girl instead of a boy. Just for a change._
> 
> For instance, the scene outside the courtroom in Chapter 3, where Magnussen's goons are harassing Janine. The default option for most male writers, and certainly for Moftiss, would be to send a man to extricate Janine from that situation (probably Sherlock). But it doesn't have to be a man. It doesn't have to be someone with combat skills. It could be anyone, since what's really going to scare them off is having someone call attention to what they're doing. So I sent Molly instead. And I figured I would give Molly a scalpel, because since she got involved in Sherlock's fake death I'm sure she's started to get a little paranoid about unwanted attention from Sherlock's criminal enemies and maybe she'd want to carry protection with her and a scalpel would be a weapon she'd be comfortable with and which (if you cork the tip) can be concealed on your person. And in the time it took for me to come up with that idea, I spent more time and energy thinking about Molly's characterization than Moftiss evidently do for most actual episodes of Sherlock. 
> 
> Same thing with the involvement of Lady Smallwood and Mummy in the trial. Why not? Smallwood is an MP, she probably has a law degree; Mummy is obviously the brains of the family, she'd want to help. Plus they're both awesome. 
> 
> Janine, with her charisma and her sense of humor and her comfortableness in her own body and her lack of shame and her determination to get her revenge, has fantastic potential as a character. Will Moftiss ever realize it? I don't know. I tried.
> 
> **HARRY**
> 
> So, for those who haven't been through the whole Harry series: Harry (my Harry, anyway) was created for "Empty Houses," a post-Reichenbach return fic that I wrote between S2 and S3. (I discovered _Sherlock_ late, and not that many people were still looking for return fics at that point, but I enjoyed writing it.) Then I was having so much fun I decided to write a sequel to it called "Young Men Carbuncular" (my favorite story in this series, but as usual the least widely read). I was also, at the time, making my way through _Doctor Who_ , and when Donna's exit from Season 4 just continued to bother me after months had gone by, I wrote "Recovery," in which Harry and Donna try to figure out what the hell happened to her during the year she doesn't remember.
> 
> Of course, once the actual Series 3 started airing, none of what happens in EH or YMC was possible any more. So when I wanted to write a response to "Sign of Three," I figured, well, I've already brought a Time Lord into this universe, I'll use him to reboot Harry's timeline and that way I can still use the character if I happen to want to write any post-s3 fic.
> 
> But bringing that whole history into LLL would create barriers for new readers, so I wrote LLL as if none of any of that has in fact happened--because apart from Harry, nobody would remember any of it anyway. I avoided Harry's POV so I wouldn't have to decide whether she does or does not remember the events of "Empty Houses" and "Young Men Carbuncular." As it is, people who've not read the earlier stories don't have to care, and people who have can make their own call. If you really want continuity, then you can make ["Recovery"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1086954/chapters/2186783) and ["Last Dance"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1157955) canon in your heads. If you'd just as soon have reboot!Harry, then you can reject them.
> 
> One of the few improvements made by S3 was the development of Sherlock's family life and especially his relationship with Mycroft. So the second time around, Harry gets to work with Mycroft and trust him (at least as far as she can throw him). She also gets to have a little more fun than she does in the earlier series. Though i don't see it working out with her and Janine, long term. Somehow I think Janine's idea of a good time might not be totally compatible with the sober lifestyle. 
> 
> The title comes from W. H. Auden's poem "Law, Like Love." You can find the full text at poemhunter.com .
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	28. AFTERWORD: Law Like Love, The Making Of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised an epilogue, but I'm not feeling it somehow. For me, the first chapter is the story's natural epilogue. However, since a few people have mentioned that they would like to try writing a story backwards sometime, I thought instead I would talk about How I Did It.

**WHY BACKWARDS?**

Sometimes people fuck around with narrative structure just for the sake of doing something different, or showing how clever they are, or just because they think it's cool. All well and good; but I'm old fashioned, and I think there should be some relationship between form and function. If you're going to do something crazy to your narrative timeline, it should be because that allows you to do something you wouldn't be able to do with a 'straight' story.

For me, the backwards structure had a lot to do with this being a fix-it. When you're assembling, say, a really complicated child's toy, and you discover at the end of the process that it doesn't work, the way you fix it is by undoing everything you did in reverse order until you find the step that you did wrong. So I had the idea of undoing HLV backwards from the ending to the point where the story went off the rails for good and all. It was also, and I suppose people might be surprised to hear me say this, a  _homage_ to the much-maligned (by myself most of all) Steven Moffat, whose "Blink" is still not only the best stand-alone episode of the new  _Doctor Who_ (from my POV) but probably the best thing he ever wrote. Moffat of course is very much addicted to manipulating the story line in order to dick the viewers around; but in "Blink," scrambling the timeline actually a) made sense and b) made the episode better. "Blink" is not actually a backwards story, of course. Sally Sparrow's perspective provides a conventional forward-moving linear narrative that everyone can follow. It's the Doctor's story that's broken up and scattered all over the place. Watching Sally put it together actually makes you think about time, and mortality, and causation, and lots of other things, in ways you hadn't before. You know, while being FREAKED FUCKING OUT by the weeping angels, who were at their bone-chilling best in their first episode.

There are other reasons why a backwards timeline was a good fit for this particular fix-it. A story starts out simple, gets gradually more complicated, and then eventually and often rather rapidly simplifies itself again as things are explained and resolved. With any story, the last, let's say, third of it is where the most complex, subtle, nuanced, and therefore (to me anyway) satisfying stuff happens. When you tell the story backward, that means that it's the earlier events that get all that emphasis and layering and complication. That made sense for this story, where John's emotions will be at their most conflicted and intense and baffling right around the time that Mary reveals herself to the Jedi. In the chronologically later chapters, John's resolving his feelings about both Mary and Sherlock. 

Also, inverting the timeline means that we can end with what a romance plot typically ends with, which is the two protagonists finally connecting. And it also provides instant gratification for pissed-off HLV haters. First chapter, bang: everything is the way it should have been. Now that you're relaxed and comfortable, let me tell you a story.

So, from my POV, any HLV fix-it fic had to address the Three Great Errors of 'His Last Vow':

* Sherlock convincing John that he needs to stay with Mary because he can only love psychopaths, and anyway Mary truly loves him...and John accepting that. After Mary practically killed Sherlock.  

* Sherlock just accepting Magnussen's "mind palace" bullshit.

* Sherlock executing Magnussen.

So, if we follow the un-building model, we would have to un-build at least as far back as their visit to Appledore, because that's where 2 out of the 3 Great Errors are committed. I considered different starting points, but I guess I always knew it would begin with John going to Harry for help. That's partly because Harry, as a lawyer (this is established in "Empty Houses"), is uniquely equipped to understand why that 'mind palace' thing is bullshit. The idea for this story took off, really, once I realized that not only would Harry be useful in calling bullshit on Magnussen, but she's the person you would go to to figure out how to actually use the libel laws to nail Magnussen. 

**HOW BACKWARDS?**

How you write a plot backwards will depend on how you write one forwards. Everyone's process for generating a plot is a little bit different. Some people outline everything first and then write to that. I sort of envy those people. For me, plotting is something that evolves as you get deeper into the story. Sure, you have a beginning, and you know where you want to end up, and you have ideas about what the big events will be. But otherwise, I build the plot as I go along. Which meant that for this story, I was composing backwards.

Some things don't change. The basic way you move a reader through the story is by raising questions and then answering them. By the time you've answered one question, you should have raised another question, which then carries the reader forward until you answer the second question, by which time you've already raised a third, and so on, until you've finally answered all the questions.

We assume the questions will be about what happens next; but it works just as well if the questions are about what's already happened. Mystery plots are driven by questions about what's already happened at least as much as questions about what happens next. Thriller plots are driven mainly by questions about what happens next, but they also always include some questions about what's already happened.

So take, for instance, the storyline about how John gets out of his marriage to Mary without losing access to Rachel. Rachel's living at 221B in "Night Call," so the question is how she got there. That chapter suggests it was a covert operation, so that makes people a little more interested in finding out more about it. In "Too Soon" we witness the moving-in, and the question there is helpfully raised by Mrs. Hudson at the end of the chapter: What the hell happened to Mary? In "Cradle Will Rock," we find out how John got rid of Mary; but the calculated cruelty of the way he does it raises the question of what prompted it, which is then answered in "The Second Stain." In "Second Stain" the first thing he does is tell Molly to send Harry the news; so now you have the question of why he's so worried about that; and you find the answer to that one in "Learning." 

The only hard part is writing the chapters that are chronologically late without giving away too much information too early about the chapters that are chronologically earlier. But even that, you just handle the same way you would handle the exposition of the backstory in a forward-moving narrative. You drop hints along the way, and gradually the picture builds up. Of course it also helps to save some genuine surprises for the 'end,' or in this case the beginning. Because it's a backwards story, most of those surprises have to do with the characters' initial motivations--Mycroft's thing for Lady Smallwood, for instance, and Harry's fear for John's safety. 

However, you do have to make some adjustments. For instance, if this story had been told forwards, there probably would have been a lot more time spent on the actual trial. There would also probably have been some kind of confrontation between Sherlock and Mary after that scene at the Landmark; but as it is, that would have decreased the impact of the "Cradle Will Rock" chapter. But then I've never really had that much patience with courtroom drama. This way, I had an excuse for doing what I always do anyway, which is cut out everything except the parts where something unexpected and exciting happens. 

**IT'S LIKE GOLDY AND BRONZY EXCEPT IT'S MADE OF IRON**

The best thing about telling the story backwards, though, is the fun you can have with irony. Irony is a concept that gets defined a lot of different ways, but really all forms of irony depend on perspective. Irony is the gap between either what is and what should be, or what seems to be and what is. Each chapter in "Law Like Love" is told from the point of view of a single character; and no single character ever knows the whole story. What's more, whereas in a forward-moving story you usually know about as much as the POV characters know at any given point, in a backwards narrative you always know things that the characters don't know, because you've seen the future and they haven't. This allows free rein for the most specific definition of verbal irony, which is saying something while meaning something else. "Learning" is probably the best example of that. What appears to be a perfectly innocent domestic scene with mother and child is actually quite sinister and horrifying; and you the reader know that. John may or may not suspect it; but he doesn't _know_ it. So in John's case the ironies create a kind of horror-movie feel: you see the characters in danger but they don't know they're in danger. 

But really the most fun I had with irony in this story was Magnussen. We don't get to see how miserable his life is after he loses the case--believe me, dear readers, he is on a downward spiral which will end in alcoholism, penury, and public shame--but we do get to enjoy watching him walk right into traps set for him and get fooled over and over again, all the while thinking his smug little thoughts and doing his disgusting little tricks. One of my favorite things about that part of the story is the running gag about Harry's apple juice. In the second chapter she lets him know that she's been sober the whole time, and it rattles him good. For much of that conversation, of course, the readers will be thinking, WTF is it with this apple juice? But from that point on, whenever you see Harry drinking an amber-colored liquid, you know what it is; and Magnussen just doesn't, and it's so much fun to watch that bastard just be so wrong about everything. The high point of the story, from that POV, is "Best Served Cold," in which Magnussen thinks he's watching a desperate Harry lashing out at Janine, but in fact both of them are having the time of their lives playing out their soap-opera confrontation and laughing so hard inside they can barely get through it. The more Magnussen enjoys the scene the more satisfying it is to us...because the worse it will be for him when he finds out what was really going on.

I would say the irony thing is the biggest reason I would recommend the backwards method to other people. It's really fun. So much fun.

**LIKE LOVE I SAY**

I thought about ending the story with Mary shooting Sherlock. But in the end, I went with John and Harry beginning again after years of estrangement. The title comes from Auden's poem "Law, Like Love," and for me, this was about fixing a story in which love is apparently expressed through violence (Mary loves John, so she shoots Sherlock; Sherlock loves John, so he shoots Magnussen) and turning it into a story where love is expressed through, as Harry says, the laying down of the law. Everyone who gets involved in the libel caper does it out of love. Harry agrees to take the lead because she loves John. John executes the scheme partly because he loathes Magnussen but also as a way of letting go of his love for Mary by doing one last thing to protect her. Sherlock loves John, and John still wants Mary safe, so Sherlock finds another way of taking Magnussen out. Mycroft loves Lady Smallwood, so he wants in. And of course Marian and Alfred love their boys. Janine at first just wants out of a horrible situation; but in the end, she comes to love Harry in a playful and probably not permanent way. Lady Smallwood loves Mycroft. The point, I guess, is not only that love is more powerful than any of the forces Magnussen has to muster against it, but that the law is ultimately a more powerful weapon than the gun.

Anyway, that was fun, and thanks for reading. Try the backwards thing yourself sometime. It'll introduce you to whole new possibilities. And I'm sure that once Series 4 finally exists...there will be an increased need for fix-it fic.


End file.
